Your business has recently embraced the open-office ideology, and you love every minute of it. Letting employees openly share ideas, watching a tighter-kit team begin to take shape – while this method of doing business might not be suitable for everyone, it sure is right for you.
What’s also right for you? Sound masking. You heard us right! The right sound management system can help any company succeed – especially when you’re all about hearing one another speak.
Don’t believe us? Let us explain what a custom-fit sound masking system can do for the company culture at your business!
What Is Sound Masking?
Sound masking is a technology that adds ambient background sound to an office or building. The ambient sound created by the system is proven to reduce or mask noise distractions, protect private conversations, and create a more comfortable environment.
Sound masking differs from white noise and does not “cancel out” other sounds. It is an inconspicuous sound that is engineered to match the frequencies of human speech.
Bustling Office or Peace and Quiet? Sound Masking Offers the Best of Both Worlds
There are benefits to encouraging worker socialization, but there are also benefits to allowing spaces of peace and quiet for work. While your company culture might lean towards one or the other, you’d be wise to provide spaces for all types of employees to get their work done. Chances are you’ve got someone on the team who isn’t an extrovert 100% of the time!
Here’s what providing that space might look like in action.
Conversations Can Now Be Had Without Yelling
The great thing about an open-office workspace: everyone talks. The downside to an open-office workspace: everyone talks! This means that small-group conversations can become next to impossible, as your workers will need to yell to hear one another, magnifying the problem.
Sound masking dulls conversations that are not in the immediate space, resulting in a much more comfortable open-office plan for everyone.
Workers Can Hear Themselves Think
Open-office spaces are great for socializing, but that won’t happen all the time – work still needs to get done! Sound masking enables your workers to focus better on their solo task at hand by quieting faraway conversations.
Your Environment Can Cater to an Employee’s Best Work
We all have times where we just don’t feel like talking to people, and that’s okay! Sometimes we need peace and quiet to complete a job. By providing side rooms with sound masking, you can create places that are isolated from the office hustle and bustle, allowing employees to choose what space works best for them.
You Reduce Stress
When it comes to the workplace, stress is nearly ubiquitous. A 2017 survey by ComPsych, a provider of employee assistance programs, found that 59% of worker respondents “have high levels of stress, with extreme fatigue/feeling out of control.” And this was in 2017—before the pandemic was even a blip on the horizon! The American Institute of Stress reports that “Numerous studies show that job stress is far and away the major source of stress for American adults and that it has escalated progressively over the past few decades.”
In short, even if you don’t think your office is a stressful place, statistically speaking, it probably is, and it’s also probably having a negative effect on your employees. Stress is, of course, a bad thing for employee morale, which in turn taints company culture and drags down team effectiveness. Indeed, Corporate Wellness Magazine reports that “workplace stress reduces employee productivity.”
One of the stressors it cites? Noise.
That’s where sound masking comes in. With smart sound management, you can create a seemingly quieter atmosphere and give your workers not only peace of mind, but better productivity, as well.
You Promote Employee Health
The reduction of perceived noise has direct ties to an improvement in employee health. According to Building Green, sound “can significantly affect human health and well-being.”
Part of this has to do with the stress it creates. The Harvard School of Public Health states that chronic stress can promote anything from depression to heart disease, which only scratches the surface of the list.
Therefore, sound masking doesn’t just reduce employee stress; it also reduces the negative health effects that come with it. A healthy office is more willing to work hard and feel more positive doing it—but it also means you’ll most likely have fewer employee sick days.
Contact Building Systems Solutions for Comprehensive Sound Masking Help
Our Blaine team is ready to install the sound masking system that lets your business reach its full potential. Give us a call today at 763-502-1515.