For some businesses, the biggest losses in productivity don’t come from employees using their time to surf the internet or complete other tasks that they should be doing on their own time, but rather from employees being distracted by office noise. In particular, the conversations that employees have during a work day that have no bearing on their duties can be office noise that not only takes them off task but affects other workers as well.

In most offices there isn’t enough soundproofing for employees to have phone or interpersonal conversations without being overheard by other employees. This causes distractions which can become a big issue, as low cubicle walls and closely placed work areas contribute to an ever increasing level of office noise in a decreasing amount of space.

If there is a lot of noise in the office and this problem continues to go unchecked, there will be consequences that can result in costs to the company. Office noise can distract other employees or cause them to stop working for a variety of reasons, which will lower productivity. It might not seem like much at the time of any particular incident, but constant interruptions in workflow can result in a large monetary cost over time.

To combat the loss of productivity, many companies are dealing with office noise through the use of office sound masking systems. These systems cover up distracting noise by adding unstructured background sound to the work environment, dramatically increasing the speech privacy of the office space. Acoustic privacy has been shown to boost productivity in nearly all office workers at some level.

If your concern is office noise, or keeping conversations out of the public earshot, consider a speech privacy system. Once in place, this cone of silence will lock in private discussions, and keep the noise away from the other employees trying to do their jobs.

If you’re in a noisy office, be aware that such an office space can be a great loss of productivity, and consequently be a loss of money to the company. Taking the time to put in place sound masking or speech privacy systems in an office not only create a better work environment for all workers, but can ensure that your employees are on task and doing their jobs well.

For some businesses, the biggest losses in productivity don’t come from employees using their time to surf the internet or complete other tasks that they should be doing on their own time, but rather from employees being distracted by noise in an office. Many companies have started using office sound masking systems to address the loss of productivity resulting from office distractions. If your concern is office noise, or keeping conversations out of the public earshot, consider a speech privacy system. Once in place, this cone of silence will lock in private discussions, and keep the noise away from the other employees trying to do their jobs.

- Frank Barnett