The Covid crisis has given us all a chance to consider how and where we work. Some of us are loving our home office environment while others can’t wait to get back to the office — I have home school-aged kids, so guess which camp I fall into!

OFFICE DESIGN & EFFICIENCY
Modern workspaces are increasingly designed to accommodate activity-based working (ABW). Hot desking and myriad ad hoc huddle spaces are all the rage, and for good reason: they can be an efficient use of space and can result in more useful staff interactions. The downside of open plan AWB work environments is a lack of privacy and the distractions that arise from hearing other people’s conversations and phone calls. If business managers don’t address this issue of distractions they stand to see a drop in productivity; some estimates suggest anything from a 5% and 15% productivity hit. But if we can lower the distractions, it’s possible to make a workspace more productive. More productivity means more output and more profit. There is no distraction-busting magic bullet, however sound masking can go a long way to reduce the level of audible distraction in any space when used in conjunction with acoustic treatment and good design.

HOW SOUND MASKING CAN WORK
Office background noise levels are generally low, which is why it’s often quite easy to overhear conversations. This is more than just ‘a little awkward’, in fact, as well as the problem of distractions, there can be significant privacy and commercial in confidence issues arising from unwitting or intentional eavesdropping.  To address this issue, sound masking systems emit a low level,
inconspicuous background sound through installed loudspeakers. With the sound masking, the ambient sound level becomes more uniform, such that noisy distractions, including
speech, are muffled by the sound masking. Essentially, sound masking fools the brain into zoning out of conversations it can’t quite make out.

SMART SOUND MASKING
The trick is to ensure this injection of noise is as inconspicuous as possible. If you were to walk into a space with sound masking running at full throttle, it would mostly certainly be audible, and most likely be irritating. So the sound masking levels need to change dynamically throughout the day, commensurate with the level of background noise in the office space.
This can be done in two ways: manually (painful and laborious), or automatically using a smart sound masking system like Roadworx’ sound masking with sensors. The sensors are used to
detect the level of ambient noise and, over a specified period of time, adjust the masking level to suit.

IN THE RIGHT SPOT
Combining a ‘smart’ sound masking system with the strategic location of sound masking emitters will ensure the system does its job without anyone noticing it’s even there. For example, by placing sound masking emitters outside of a meeting room it’s possible to measure the noise level within the room and adjust the masking outside to provide a level of
speech privacy from those walking past a meeting room. So as a meeting gets more animated, the masking is automatically boosted outside.

HOME RUN
Unfortunately, for those of us enduring our home office experience, sound masking is not (yet) advanced enough to drown out a six-year-old with a Tonka truck going at Mach 2 down the stairs. But at the very least it can provide us with an office space we can escape to in which work can be performed effectively and efficiently.

For more information on Roadworx Technologies products, get in touch with our specialist sales team on 1800 00 77 80

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