In the world of facility management, sound masking is often seen as a luxury rather than a necessity. However, when you look at the return on investment (ROI) of sound masking, you’ll find it is more of a high-yield asset. But you don’t want to invest in something when you can’t prove the ROI, but that’s where Building Systems Solutions is here to help.
First, you must shift your thinking from office decibel levels to dollars and cents. To truly measure the impact your ROI system is having on your bottom line, you need to look at three key data points: Acoustic Privacy Index scores (PI), employee productivity, and HR/legal liability.
Let’s dive into ways to prove your sound-masking ROI to your stakeholders.
Measuring Privacy Index (PI) Scores
The most objective way to prove ROI is to measure your Privacy Index (PI). This score is a calculation of how much speed is actually understood by unintended listeners.
A typical open office without sound masking has a PI score of about 60% to 70%, which means most conversations are intelligible. High-quality sound masking targets a PI score of 95% or higher. Without sound masking, a person’s voice can travel from 30 to 50 feet and remain intelligible. Sound masking reduces that to about 15 feet.
The way to prove your PI is to use a sound level meter and document the scores. A 25% improvement in privacy directly correlates to reduced eavesdropping and a significant boost in deep-work focus thanks to fewer audible distractions.
Gains in Productivity
A significant statistic in office acoustics is that the average employee loses about 21.5 minutes of productivity per day due to conversational distractions. Let’s take a look at how this translates to dollars.
In an office of 100 employees with an average salary of $65,000, those 21 minutes translate to over $290,000 in lost labor costs annually. For the U.S., this translates to about losses of $650 billion a year due to distractions.
Studies also show that sound masking can lead to a 10% to 25% increase in productivity and up to a 30% reduction in data entry errors. By comparing the one-time cost of a sound masking system against the annual reclaimed labor value, you’ll find that sound masking can help make your employees more productive. Most systems have an ROI of about 12 months.
Reducing Complaints and Compliance Risk
Noise is consistently the #1 complaint in modern office surveys. Beyond annoyance is the risk of legal non-compliance.
To prove the ROI of your sound masking system, begin to track noise-related and privacy-related HR complaints before the installation and after the installation. A decrease in these complaints leads to higher employee retention–saving you the $15K-$30K cost of replacing a single employee.
For health care, finance, or legal firms, privacy isn’t just a perk. It’s a mandate. For example, HIPAA requires “reasonable safeguards” to protect patient privacy, and the GLBA mandates the protection of non-public personal information in the financial sector.
For your ROI, a single privacy breach or a failed compliance audit can result in fines far exceeding the cost of a sound masking system.
Proving the Value to Leadership
To get your budget approved, don’t just talk about white noise, as sound masking is so much more than white noise. Present a productivity recovery report and highlight how much the company is currently “spending” on distractions and how sound masking acts as a permanent barrier against those losses.
Gain Back Productivity with Sound Masking by Building System Solutions
At Building Systems Solutions, we specialize in turning acoustic chaos into a calm environment for your employees, clients, and patients. By engineering custom sound masking systems tailored to your specific office layout, we help you eliminate acoustic distractions and privacy concerns. Let us help you build a quieter, more profitable work environment where your best people can do their best work.
Call us today at 763-502-1515 or request a free quote online!