Businesses from colleges to financial institutions are investing in high-quality sound masking systems. Proper sound management is beneficial for your customers and employees alike, making it a great way to make your business stand out from the competition.
Understanding the benefits of sound masking first requires comprehending the concept itself. Let’s go over the technology involved, along with what it can do for your business, no matter the industry.
Sound Masking: A Multipurpose Tool
Sound masking is essentially the nullification of background noise through the addition of specialized sound. The result is a quiet space. While this might seem like a slightly backward approach, in reality, it isn’t. Countless businesses, like financial institutions and hospitals, rely on this technology for consumer privacy, lest they fail to meet their legal obligations and land themselves in hot water.
The benefits of such tech are substantial and include:
Increased Employee Productivity
Have you ever donned a pair of noise-canceling headphones and marveled at how efficiently you could then work? When done right, sound masking can have much the same effect. It prevents your workers from getting distracted by conversations across the office, allowing them to settle in and focus on their jobs.
Greater Employee Comfort
We’ve all been in a situation where noise is so loud that it’s hard to concentrate on anything else. While everyone’s tolerance for noise is different, there’s a strong chance someone in your office or facility doesn’t appreciate the noise levels. If you have employees who actually work better with more noise, they can simply listen to music through their headphones. Sound masking gives everyone the chance to be comfortable in their workspace.
Increased Privacy
With a sound masking system present, businesses can protect private conversations better because they become unintelligible. People will be able to tell that a conversation is happening, but they will not be able to make out the words. This not only helps protect private conversations, but also keeps distractions to a minimum for other employees.
If your organization serves an industry where verbal privacy is a necessity (healthcare, financial, legal, etc.), testing your facility for speech privacy standards can help show due diligence in compliance with national speech privacy regulations like HIPAA.
Increased Client Comfort
Of course, employees aren’t the only people who inhabit your building! Clients come in and out, too, and while the time they spend there may be less than your employees do, their presence still warrants consideration. They’re where your profits come from, after all!
Luckily, sound masking is amazing at ensuring client satisfaction, as we covered in our blog surrounding the subject. Creating calm waiting rooms and making it easier to concentrate and deal with complex matters such as finances allows the right sound management system to cater to a wonderful client experience. Of course, it also enables your workers to do their jobs better, too, as we already attested to—which means they can better attend to client needs, thus furthering the quality of the time spent with your company.
Complying With Legal Obligations
As we alluded to above, sound masking systems can help your business fulfill its legal obligations—which is an essential benefit in and of itself, regardless of what it does for client comfort levels. After all, a business that doesn’t follow the law is liable to face the consequences, which can be substantial in reputation and financial cost.
Privatizing conversations via sound management can be critical in showing compliance with HIPAA criterium, which governs patient privacy in the medical industry. Financial institutions also are subject to similar privacy-related laws—the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) being one in particular.
Failure to comply with these standards will drastically drag down a company's public reputation, resulting in less business in the future, thanks to the massive loss of customer trust. The financial punishments are not to be understated, either; according to McAfee, violations of the GLBA can result in fines of up to $100,000 and, in some cases, imprisonment.
Sound management systems aren’t just for comfort and productivity; they safeguard your business against legal trouble.
Ready to Invest in Sound Masking? Building System Solutions is Here to Help
Building Systems Solutions provides facility sound systems that address safety, communication, and privacy concerns. We’d be happy to show you what sound masking can bring to your business! Give our Blaine office a call now at 763-502-1515.