Sound Masking: How You Cover The Noise
When designers plan office spaces, they tend to expect they will be quiet once they are in use. They do not take into account the noise that will almost certainly ensue. This poses a very difficult problem for the workers who must function in those areas. The constant chattering of one's colleagues carries through open-plan offices, resulting in office noise, distractions, stress, and a loss of both creativity and productivity.
So what is there to do when you just can't concentrate in your office because of all the noise that is surrounding you? One method that is often used nowadays is sound masking. Although you might not be able to make the noise fully disappear, it does at least help you to create speech privacy. This technique actually works and it makes the employees more productive in many businesses.
Why is sound masking so effective? It uses something called white noise to make it difficult to separate individual sounds, such as conversations, from each other. White noise is a constant low noise played in the background in a room such as an office. With it, you can mask other noises so that they are not distinguishable from one another.
State of the art technology is giving office workers unique new ways to guard their private conversations. Acoustical treatments like the most current "direct field" systems can be mounted into the ceiling, making inconspicuous noises which prevent conversations from being overheard.
To increase their productivity, employees can choose to use white noise generators. These devices block distracting background noises by playing soothing sounds like waterfalls, rain showers, or the ocean. The white noise generator has been shown to aid worker's productivity by helping them focus and concentrate on the task at hand.
No matter how you mask the sound in your office, your environment will reap rewards for buffering off the acoustic nuisances that can occur in any place of business. You want the environment for your staff to be as comfortable and stress-free as possible to get the best performance from yourself and your employees.
When an office is designed, it is probably not designed with the intention of reducing office noise. This results in an environment that may not be so pleasant to work in. There are different ways to cope with this problem. Some offices use sound masking with great success. They have been found to be more efficient than other offices. There are also state of the art ways to guard private conversations. Such speech privacy methods use systems that are mounted in ceilings to prevent conversations from being overheard. Using a combination of these methods will increase worker productivity.
Published January 14th, 2009
Filed in Business
