Category : workplace privacy

Using Privacy Screens and Noise Reduction to Create an ADA-Accommodating Workplace

10 May 2019Mark Canavarroworkplace privacy No comment

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is transforming the workplace.

One of the emerging areas of interest within the ADA is the topic of psychiatric disabilities – conditions which require a variety of solutions to help employees reduce noise and light, and increase privacy.

The Department of Labor provides some guidelines for an ADA-compliant workplace for psychiatric disabilities.

“Many employers are aware of different types of accommodations for people with physical and communication disabilities, but they may be less familiar with accommodations for employees with disabilities that are not visible, such as psychiatric disabilities,” their website says. “Over the last few years, increasing numbers of employers have expressed a desire and need for information and ideas on accommodations for employees with psychiatric disabilities.”

Fortunately, the solutions for employees dealing with psychiatric disabilities are simple and cost-effective.

Privacy Panels for an ADA Workplace

One of the details in the ADA regarding effective workplaces states that an easy modification for an ADA-compliant office would be to reduce and remove distractions in the workplace.

In offices where open spaces dominate the work area, OBEX privacy panels provide the privacy needed to decrease sound and noise. The panels can be installed within minutes without interrupting workflow.

This means that your business can conform to ADA guidelines without lost labor or interruptions that could compound an employee’s anxiety and stress.

Our privacy panels provide significant sound reduction along with increased visual privacy. In addition to that, we provide a variety of configurations, colors and materials that can mesh with the current visual design of your office.

Cubicles for an ADA Workplace

Another recommendation from the Department of Labor is for offices to add “room dividers, partitions or other soundproofing or visual barriers between workspaces to reduce noise or visual distractions.”

An excellent solution for this is cubicles, which provide a sufficient reduction of noise and sight distractions. If your office has adopted an open work area, cubicle-style walls and partitions can allow you to reduce sound, sights and light without needing a major overhaul of your existing work areas.

These private workspaces not only comply with ADA suggestions but they have many benefits for productivity and focus. The research is clear that employees work best when their mind has enough spatial privacy. This sense of privacy allows the mind to be more creative and focused, leading to better production and outcomes – and it can bring your office in line with what the Department of Labor says about making your office ADA-compliant.

“The majority of accommodations can be made for minimal (if any) cost and a small investment of time and planning. Moreover, effective accommodations can be good for business,” the department notes. “They help employees return to work more quickly after disability or medical leave, eliminate costs due to lost productivity and can be key to recruiting and retaining qualified employees.”

Other Suggestions for an ADA Workplace

Making your workplace a comfortable place for those with psychiatric disabilities extends beyond privacy panels, cubicles and other sight and sound reduction methods.

One of the keys to providing a proper workplace for those with disabilities is to be in communication with them about what they need to be efficient and focused in the workplace.

“It is important to remember that the process of developing and implementing accommodations is individualized and should begin with input from the employee. Accommodations vary, just as people’s strengths, work environments and job duties vary,” the Department of Labor notes.

Other tips for creating a welcome and productive ADA workplace are as follows:

Schedule breaks according to what the individual needs.
Be flexible with therapy appointments and other mental-health-related medical visits.

Boston University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation is also an excellent resource for learning how to create an ADA-compliant workplace for employees with psychiatric disabilities.

Why We Love Privacy and Why It Affects Your Workplace

25 April 2017Mark Canavarroworkplace privacy No comment

Privacy is a big deal.

More than a big deal, the concept of privacy is a cultural phenomenon in the United States. Apple’s battle with the FBI in the early part of 2016 launched the privacy discussion into the national spotlight like never before.

What became clear is that, for most of us, our phones are our life and we don’t want anyone sneaking into our digital lives.

But the concept of privacy extends beyond who’s allowed to hack into our phones. We like our personal space, we don’t want to be crowded out in bed and we don’t want to be brushed up on at the dinner table.

When it comes to work, we don’t want nosy coworkers peeking over our cubicle wall with inquisitive and annoying stares as we are trying and close a sale.

Where did our obsession with privacy come from? That’s a question that has many implications, not the least of which includes understanding why and how privacy effects the way we work.

First, the Definition: What is Privacy?

To get a solid definition of what privacy is, or at least what it means, we turned to a 2013 article from The Atlantic.

Reporter Jathan Sadowski interviewed Georgetown University law professor Julie E. Cohen who had written a soon-to-be-published article about privacy for the Harvard Law Review.

Sadowski said Cohen railed against the notion that privacy was “just an instrument used to advance some other principle or value.”

Cohen then went on to say, “Privacy is shorthand for breathing room to engage in the process of … self-development.”

That’s an interesting definition when taken in the context of the workplace. Our jobs are, in a way, part of our self-development.

We put up privacy screens and other panel extenders because we want space to be ourselves and do our thing.

Respecting Privacy Means Respecting the Individual

Security expert Daniel Solove provided the next step in the privacy argument when he published a LinkedIn piece in 2014 titled, “10 Reasons Why Privacy Matters.” In his list, Solove noted that privacy helps maintain appropriate social boundaries. It’s an interesting point, especially as it pertains to the workplace.

“People establish boundaries from others in society. These boundaries are both physical and informational,” he wrote. “We need places of solitude to retreat to, places where we are free of the gaze of others in order to relax and feel at ease.”

You don’t always get a place to retreat in your office, but having a private cubicle with sound-deadening panel extenders gives you a sense of ease and solitude, a sense that you aren’t under the constant gaze of your co-workers or bosses.

This anonymity is crucial to performance, as employees who feel like they’re constantly being watched are more likely to make mistakes and avoid creativity. They play by the rules and avoid standing out.

Give Your Employees Privacy and They’ll Thrive

As we just mentioned, providing individuals (employees included) their own space – even if their privacy is extended by 12 inches – can lead to a healthier, more creative state of mind.

In a 2014 article from The New York Times, reporter Kate Murphy talked about privacy’s role in workplace creativity.

“It’s not surprising that privacy research in both online and offline environments has shown that just the perception, let alone the reality, of being watched results in feelings of low self-esteem, depression and anxiety,” Murphy wrote. “Whether observed by a supervisor at work or Facebook friends, people are inclined to conform and demonstrate less individuality and creativity.”

She went on to say that psychological literature likens privacy to sleep; we need moments of not being watched just like we need moments of slumber.

“The arousal associated with being observed and the implicit judgment drain cognitive resources,” she wrote. “We worry about how we are perceived, which inhibits our ability to explore our thoughts and feelings so we can develop as individuals.”

Protecting Your Employees Privacy with a Simple Solution

In business terms, adding privacy to an office’s cubicle systems equates to a massive logistical headache. Desks have to be broken down, computers have to be removed, network cables have to be rerouted and employees are displaced.

Our panel extenders skip all the hassle and can be installed in a matter of hours. We can even do installations while employees are working.

An Overview of Our Desk and Privacy Mount Panels

17 April 2017Mark Canavarrodesk-mounted panels, office furniture, panel extenders, workplace privacy No comment

Adding privacy to your office doesn’t have to be an ordeal.

In many cases, companies default to cubicle overhauls that require a lot of moving parts: rewiring cables, moving employees to temporary workstations and an install crew that comes in after hours to do the installation.

Our desk and table mount privacy panels give you a seamless solution that reduces work interruptions and, in many cases, can be installed by your team with only minor inconveniences.

In theory, this sounds great, but you should take a moment to think about all the aspects of an installation, no matter how easy it may seem.

Are the new mounts adjustable and will they damage existing furniture? How easy are adjustments? What size options are there? Are there color options? What’s the warranty?

We’ll cover each of these topics in the next few minutes.

Simple, Fluid Privacy Panel Installation

Our mounts work with desks between ¾-of-an-inch thick to 2.5 inches thick, which means there’s a good chance we can find a solution for your existing furniture.

The clamps we use to secure our privacy panels are designed well and don’t damage your furniture. It takes about five minutes to install them with an Allen wrench we provide.

Our mounts also feature channels that can work side-to-side or front-to-back.

Versatile Panel Sizes and Colors

Our panels for desks and tables come in three different heights and eight different widths. We can also create custom sizes for you.

We also offer 12 different frame colors so you can stick with the office color-palate or add variation.

If you want to cut down on sound transfer between workspaces, acoustical panels are a good choice. They come in 20 different types of fabrics. And, just like our ability to customize panel sizes, we can also customize panel colors.

Sound Transmission Class

This last concept is an indication of how effective our panels are. A product’s STC rating is a measurement of how much sound is lost when it passes through a wall or a panel.

A reduction of 10 decibels is actually heard as a 50% reduction in noise levels.

Our acoustical tile panels have an STC rating of 26, which means your employees will note a significant reduction in ambient noise as soon as your panels are installed.

A First-Hand Look at a Panel Installation

As we mentioned earlier, our panels are a simple, elegant solution for increasing the privacy of your office’s workspaces.

Our website includes a series of videos that show just how easy installation is. Here is one of those videos:

This video highlights the greatest advantage to using OBEX to increase your office’s audio and visual privacy. It’s a fantastic alternative to tearing down and rebuilding a cubicle, which costs hundreds of dollars in labor costs.

And that cost doesn’t factor in the down time for rerouting cables and moving computers, cables and keyboards.

All of this creates stress and reduced productivity. It’s labor-intensive, it’s disruptive and there aren’t many companies who can do installations during normal working hours.

Some Final Thoughts About Table and Desk Privacy Panels

If you’re new to privacy panels, the solutions may seem unbelievably simple – and they are.

We’ve put a lot of time into finding solutions for our clients that help them keep the ship running smoothly as we install their panels.

The result is a line of desk and table privacy panels with a wide range of sizes, colors and customizable options that easily integrate our products into your office’s existing design themes.

If you have any questions about our panels, customizations or the installation process contact us by email or give us a call at (888)323-6986.

4 Reasons Why Privacy is Important in Any Office

8 March 2016Mark Canavarroworkplace privacy No comment

Privacy is a very important factor in everybody’s life. Mothers with young children crave it like water in a desert. Writers need it to focus their thoughts. Lovers search it out to bask in its blissful solitude together. All human beings need privacy, just as much as they need public interaction.

Why do Human Beings need Privacy?

People, no matter what race or what part of the World they are from need privacy in some form or another to properly function. The lack of personal privacy inhibits personal development and self-expression, and can disrupt a person’s thought processes.

Why Privacy is so important at the Office:

The lack of privacy in an employee’s workspace can hinder a working person’s sense of autonomy, giving them less control over their working environment, and causing their productivity to suffer. In worst case scenarios, it can also be an affront to an employee’s dignity that causes their morale to plummet also.

Below are four major reasons why privacy in an office setting is so important for productive employees to work properly.

#1 – Workplace Information Protections

Businesses small and large have to deal with the workplace security of the information they are working on, or holding. Whether it is a retail outlet with customer credit card or personal information, or a major corporation dealing with sensitive business information or government contract secrets – They all need a safe, secure, and private area in which to handle that information.

With identity theft becoming such an issue these days, employees that are put in charge of handling sensitive information need to have secure and private areas in which to do their jobs, regardless if it is a client’s social security number, or the company’s new plans for the next multi-million dollar widget to hit the market.

Open office areas do not provide these kinds of protections for sensitive business information. Just like you would not use a computer in this day and age without virus protection, employees with access to any type of sensitive information need privacy and security to do their jobs properly.

#2 – Concentration

Constant interruptions, distractions, and background noise can severely hinder an employee’s ability to work. Without privacy and clear train of thought, concentration wanders to everything else except what an employee is supposed to be working on.

According to Teresa Lesiuk, assistant professor at the University of Miami, music can break a worker out of a narrow train of thought, and open their minds to more than just one certain way of thinking.

When an employee is surrounded by cubicles full of fellow employees yammering on phones or to other coworkers, quiet music has been found to be able to give the office worker a sense of personal privacy in their office and enhance concentration in a noisy environment.

No matter what tricks an employee uses in order to drown out the clatter of a busy office, it is a widely accepted fact that privacy is the number one means of ensuring proper concentration on the task at hand in an office setting.

#3 – Personal Space

Definition of Personal Space: The physical space immediately surrounding someone, into which any encroachment feels threatening to or uncomfortable for them.

Everyone has heard of the unseen 4 feet of personal space that people need when interacting with the rest of society. In an office building full of busy coworkers this rule of human nature prevails as well.

Workers in the office or out of it need their own personal space around them in order to feel comfortable. If an employee does not feel comfortable, then they will not be in the proper mindset to work.

This is why privacy is so vital to provide employees with if one wants happy, efficient employees who get the job done on time and get along with their fellow coworkers.
Offices with open spaces need to provide quiet zones and some form of privacy for their employees.

Cubicle workers need enough separated space between other worker’s cubicles as well in order to also feel that they have some designated personal area in-between them, in order to feel that they have an adequate amount of privacy to do their work in.

#4 – Productivity

Privacy for some workers is detrimental to their productivity. These are the workers who absolutely abhor open space office environments. They collaborate when they need to with fellow coworkers and then go back to the sanctity of their cubicle or office in order to finish their work unhindered by needless interruptions.

Increased productivity with an appropriate amount of given effort on the employee’s part, is of course the goal of all businesses worldwide. Regardless of whether the working environment is open spaced or cubicles employees will still need a certain amount of privacy in order to accomplish their working goals also.

The IOSR Journal of Business and Management stated that visibility, accessibility, and informal interaction are all keys to workplace productivity. But without the privacy to sit down alone unhindered, those three important factors to better employee’s productivity are rendered impotent.

Conclusion:

There are many different variables that make up a successful working office environment. Businesses that do not calculate worker privacy into their office equation will most likely suffer for it in the form of lost productivity, which will then equal out to lost profit margins and the inability to properly compete with more efficient competitors.

Providing workers with the proper privacy they need in order to do their jobs is a small price to pay for a successful, happy working office that can still be interactive and collaborative.

Privacy does not mean isolationism. Employers can walk the balance between both worlds in order to create a working environment that is reliably capable of producing desired results without wasting materials, time, or energy, and that is just good business at its best.

How to Boost Office Productivity with These 5 Tips

27 January 2016Mark Canavarroworkplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

Every office is looking to boost productivity. While there are a whole host of tips and tricks for kicking the afternoon lull, boosting morale and energy, and throwing employee out-put into high gear, sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective.

Here are five tips that can boost your office productivity – and do it immediately.

Set Break Times in Stone

As the first tip, this one seems the most contradictory – taking breaks means time away from projects, cutting into productivity, right? The exact opposite is actually true. The human mind wasn’t designed to operate like a machine, especially not in our early days as a species, so when it finds itself stuck with routine tasks or a huge flow of work, it begins to regress into shut-down mode. This saves energy for that surprise tiger you might see when you go out hunting and gathering later. So the shorter breaks are and the more they’re skipped, the more employees’ minds will start powering down and losing focus on their projects, in fact cutting into productivity.

Cut the Fluff

The greatest key to productivity is focus: an employee’s ability to focus on a project, and management’s ability to focus the tasks they’re assigning to their workers. Often times businesses are strict on work hours, meetings, and the freedom an employee has on a project – with the aim to make all progress clear and tracked. However, to truly encourage productivity, being flexible is the key. This means avoiding meetings when a simple email would suffice to get the information across, being less strict with an employee’s working hours and their ability to work from home, and especially changing the level of creativity allowed within the working force. It’s important to evaluate even the longest of working traditions and think to yourself “does this cut into productivity?” Even if that weekly meeting has been set in stone for years, it may be time to put it away in favor of a more flexible and focused approach.

Make it Personal

When the word “productivity” comes around, it’s usually associated with a bunch of numbers and graphs, as if workers are Terminator-style robots with all the programmable features and none of the awesome superpowers. However, that’s just not the case. People work harder and produce better results when they’re personally motivated to see something accomplished, and by feeding this personalized drive, you’ll find employees willing to go the extra mile and focusing harder during work hours. Make them a part of the project, and give them a reason to actually care.

Get Collaborative

They say two heads are better than one, and after working on something for a long time, it’s easy to get tunnel vision on the entire project. Either the final result won’t be as great as you hoped, or you’ll end up lagging behind while trying to rethink the entire process. By encouraging employees to reach out, you can cut through the fog and get tasks handled much more efficiently, not just boosting productivity, but improving the quality you deliver.

Actually Work Together

Four hands are also better than two – by working with others on big tasks and on small, work can be divided and conquered faster than before. Even better than that, by having several people on the job, you’re benefitting from several different specialties and strengths. When you find yourself loathing a certain part of a project, you can pass this off to someone who thrives in that area, allowing you to concentrate on something you’re good at – and most importantly, something that doesn’t make you want to stab your eye out. This boosts your mood and allows you to work with more focus.

Keep Things Organized

It may seem obvious that keeping things organized leads to productivity, but most people look past the real value it has to offer. If you’re a more creative but scatterbrained kind of worker, you’ll be lost and confused in the clutter of your desk or schedule, not only missing vital deadlines, but even focusing on the wrong projects. For more on-point workers, your drive to get things organized last minute can lead to valuable time being wasted, bleeding into your productivity levels.

Get a To-Do List.

We all have a list of things we want to accomplish, but the means of actually doing so can quickly escape us when the internet and all its sweet, understanding cat videos call to us. To turn this tip into an actual game plan, you have to chart out your daily tasks in detail. Organize them based on importance, so that if you miss any, at least the important things are covered. Organize them based on time, because the more brain-intensive tasks might feel like waterboarding during the afternoon lull. And finally, base them on your level of interest – if you absolutely hate a project, handle it first, and then reward yourself with some email-writing; or on the flipside, try the email-writing first to build up the courage to keep going.

Keep Your Workspace Tidy.

They say geniuses have the messiest desks – however, their skill lies not with their mind but with their ability to not get distracted by the clutter. The rest of us aren’t so lucky; a messy desk will make it difficult to find the tools and objects you need to take on work, and the few minutes spent hunting them down will quickly find you lagging behind in productivity. In addition to this, while most wars are fought and won in the situation room, your battle of getting-things-done is mostly fought in your mind. A cluttered workspace will make you feel cluttered and bogged down, while a tidy area boosts motivation to get stuff accomplished.

By including these tips and tricks in the way you approach the office, you can create a working environment that is focused on just that – working at its full potential.

3 Ways Cubicle Panel Extenders Save You Money

13 January 2016Mark Canavarrocubicle extenders, workplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

With the modern age making entrepreneurship in fashion and greater profits for existing businesses more attainable, a problem quickly arises: office space. Privacy can lead to focus for employees, which can lead to greater productivity and finally greater results, and that calls for a cubicle that helps this concentration. However, investing in so many cubicles can quickly feel like shooting yourself in the foot – saving money and making profits is the name of the game, right?

With cubicle panel extenders, you can get the best of both worlds: a customized cubicle that fits your needs and size – and more importantly – one that fits your price tag. Here are three ways that these panel extenders can actually save you money in the long-run and in the short-run, making them the best choice for a new business or an already roaring company:

Save Money By Saving Time

Every business knows that saving money isn’t just about cutting on prices and finding deals – it’s about conserving the time and effort your employees are spending on tasks. This applies to ensuring productivity is kept up and small delays don’t lead to a missed deadline. Cubicle panel extenders offer this same advantage by offering privacy and focus to your employees, allowing them to focus on their work and not the distraction of a water-cooler conversation or nearby clients conversing on a separate project. The savings don’t just stop there – the very way they’re built is designed to save time, and inherently, save you money.

Less Time Spent on Installation

Whether you’re a handyman who can install the most difficult of objects in a matter of seconds, or you’re the less crafty type who struggles with installing a light bulb, the cubicle panel extenders are designed with ease and efficiency in mind. If you’re remodeling your office space and find privacy as a key to success, you can find yourself in a jam for time with traditional cubicles that can take as much as a day to put in place. However, the extenders are as simple as a few moments of your time, an Allen wrench, and a handful of screws, allowing you to transform your office without cutting into your deadlines.

Less Time Spent Readjusting

Success is about innovation, and that may mean redesigning your office space again in the near future. With normal cubicles, you’d find yourself in the same bind all over again, with the need to disassemble, move, and reassemble the spaces over the course of a day – if not many days. These extenders offer the same speed the first time as they do in the last, and readjusting the angle or moving them entirely can be done in a matter of minutes, saving you valuable time and money with it.

Save Money By Saving Space

When success comes knocking at your door, it comes with a handful of problems to join it. As your business expands, this means hiring more employees and purchasing more equipment to handle the workload, and while your company may be growing, it doesn’t mean your office building is. To avoid tight workspaces that result in more headaches and frustration than productivity, arranging cubicles in the most economical and efficiency way is the answer. The more people you can fit in a room, the less rent you’ll pay on a larger building, and the more productivity you can achieve through collaboration. Cubicle panel extenders it all in one.

More Compact and Flexible

Traditional cubicles keep to a very strict size and level of flexibility, making your dreams of a pillow-fort style office space hard to come by. Cubicle panel extenders, on the flipside, offer a level of flexibility and creativity, allowing you to extend them as far as you’d like or angle them in certain directions to keep from irritating your co-workers in tight spaces. With their compact size making it easy to match up several to achieve a certain angle or only reach so far, you can create the cubicle space you want in a shape that suits the greater good of the office.

Save Money By Spending Less

Of course the greatest money-saving advantage is the simplest – cubicle panel extenders can literally save you money. This is accomplished not only by their more reasonable price range and compact size, making it possible to buy fewer to suit your needs, but in greater ways.

They Come with Everything You Need

Some cubicle walls require an array of different tools and pieces to come together, with special adjusters, drills, and even unique screws stacking on the price tag in addition to its expected cost. Cubicle panel extenders are made for the future, with efficiency and ease in mind, and they accomplish this by coming entirely self-contained. Each features an Allen wrench with the packaging, all the screws needed, and no specialized parts that you have to search out last minute, making it possible for you to account the cost and then trust it.

No Need to Invest in New Cubicles

As your business grows and more space is needed, maybe you decide to go the simpler route and upgrade to a larger office building – but the costs don’t end there. Now you’re in dire need of more cubicles to accommodate new employees and collaborative projects. How can you manage all of it without racking up the price tag? Cubicle panel extenders allow you to use the traditional cubicles you already have and make them larger, at a significantly lesser cost. Now you can create that awesome hacker-style desk space with a wrapping panel making your area larger, all without the price tag you’d have to hack a bank to afford.

The simple concepts are often the best, and when your office space is looking for a change, it’s time to focus on what works at the right price tag. In the end, these extenders can do more than make office life easier: they can save you mo

4 Industries Where Office Privacy is Vital

16 December 2015Mark Canavarronoisy office, open office design, privacy screens, workplace aesthetics, workplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

More and more offices are making the switch from traditional cubicles to a more open-spaced layout, designed to create a space that encourages energy, productivity, and especially the sharing of information for the best collaboration. However, this advantage also comes with a disadvantage – a huge loss in privacy. For some industries, office privacy is not that great a concern, yet there are still many industries that rely on discretion as their bread and butter, not only for completing their work but retaining their credibility as businesses that can be trusted.

Here are four industries where office privacy is still incredibly vital.

1. The Health Industry

Anyone who’s gone to the hospital and been forced to wear one of those nightgowns with the open back understands that privacy in the health care arena is hard to come by. However, jokes aside, when the technical aspect comes into play within the offices of the doctors themselves, the technicians, the scientists, and so on, privacy between offices and between cubicles is absolutely key, considering the information they have on hand and the amount of people who could suffer if it was wrongly unveiled.

Identity theft.

The health care industry has more information on us than our own mothers, with access to not only our immediate contact information, names, ages, and so forth, but in some cases more sensitive legal information that could result in a horrible case of identity theft if revealed. Privacy within the office through privacy panels, personal offices, specialized computers meant to combat those “over the shoulder readers,” and other tactics ensure that only those with explicit permission and clearances can review the information, preventing a new employee, an intern, or even a long-time worker having a bad day from doing something unwise with the information.

Embarrassment and loss of trust.

While your name and mother’s maiden name is certainly personal information, what can be more personal than your health records themselves? In the health care industry, patients trust a certain level of confidentiality which allows them to be open about the state of their health. If you knew you were risking a few new interns joking about your rather embarrassing disease that night at the bar, you would be far less likely to trust the medical profession in the future. This logic is why office privacy is crucial in the health industry, as privacy for personal reasons is just as important as for legal reasons.

2. The Financial Industry

A title with no short limitation, the financial industry such as banking, stock brokerage, and even online retail stores are under no small amount of pressure to keep that private information private. While an office does allow for greater collaboration, ensuring that the working space is kept enclosed and private is a top priority, with the aim to ensure that the vital and even personally dangerous information they have access to doesn’t result in ruin.

Identify theft or financial ruin.

Just as with the health industry, the loss of personal information can lead to others taking your identity and running from the hills, sparing only the time to land some serious blows against your credibility, your financial stability, and more. Entrusting your personal information and especially your cash to an industry requires a certain amount of trust, with the confidence that such a relationship results in profits rather than financial ruin. By accidentally sharing a few numbers, a few names, or even allowing a passing employee without clearance to glance at a screen, people could be at risk of losing their entire livelihood. With this in mind, many of the businesses within this industry have taken great pains to ensure that privacy panels, enclosed cubical, personal offices, and more are set in place to ensure they can benefit others rather than stand as a massive risk.

3. Law Enforcement

Anyone who’s watched a daytime soap opera is familiar with what happens if a member of the law enforcement, or the government for that matter, leaks a vital piece of information. Not only does it weaken their evidence, but it discredits the individuals themselves and can result in slanderous claims against innocent people. This extends far beyond catching criminals and into all elements of law enforcement, where they are privy to vital information about several people that they themselves, and especially those they’re close to, may not know. With this in mind, office privacy can be the difference between a system that works for the benefit of others, and one that leads to huge lawsuits, a loss in reputation, and damaged lives.

4. Cloud Storage

You may think that the cloud is the exact opposite of an industry in need of office privacy, since the purpose of the cloud is to share information and make it readily accessible by others. On the contrary, cloud computing and storage is home to more information than any of the previous industries combined. In fact, many of those industries turn to cloud’s online sharing and storage as a means for managing their business. This makes it clear that the cloud’s ability to give access only to the right people, and to dodge potential information leaks, is vital.

There are many facets to cloud computing, each requiring a team of experts to manage it. However, cyber terrorism is on the rise and there is nothing a few hackers would like better than to stumble upon a random office conversation, finding a few key words that lead them to unlock that sensitive information. With that in mind, cloud storage, and both the businesses and the techs who manage it, are in true need of office privacy at its best.

Collaboration and sharing truly is what makes the world go round, but when it comes to the sensitive information we’d rather keep to ourselves, and the industries we trust to keep it for us, implementing a certain degree of office privacy is the only thing standing between disaster and a well-working machine.

Noisy Coworkers? 3 Tips to Help You Be More Productive

2 December 2015Mark Canavarrocubicle extenders, desk-mounted panels, noisy office, workplace aesthetics, workplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

Everyone works differently. Each person will approach a task with a diverse and unusual array of tools, techniques, requirements, downfalls, and advantages to see it completed. With that in mind, working collaboratively can be a burden rather than a help.

An open office is made to encourage communication and interaction, all with the aim to boost productivity, but for some, the sound and activity can actually do the opposite. This gets turned up to eleven when general activity isn’t the only enemy – a particularly noisy coworker is. You know, the kind who likes to read aloud, take their calls on speaker, or even approaches conversations with a voice of utter thunder.

You can’t let this problem harm your productivity, but there are better ways to avoid the distraction besides hoping for a change in their personality or even a transfer. Do you have a noisy coworker? Here are three tips for getting past this obstacle and staying productive.

1. Listen to Other Things For many, the issue is not sound, but noise.

You may be able to ignore the intense sound of a storm outside your window, but the noisy conversation of two nearby coworkers can completely distract you, preventing your concentration on the work at hand. The simple answer is to substitute the distracting noise with something your mind can more easily ignore.

– Music.

Studies have proven that music in fact helps people concentrate; it allows your brain to limit the number of distractions in the environment to a single sound, and then manage that distraction. With this in affect, more brain power can be devoted to what actually matters. Instrumental music is especially favorable, as our minds do not interpret soft piano or violin in the same way it does voices – a sound that is made to draw our attention and keep our attention. In this way, Mozart becomes a much better working companion than the employee next to you, because at least he knows how to stay objective.

– Rain sounds and white noise.

In the same way music helps limit our distractions and fill our ears with something easily ignored, white noise provides a healthy substitute to voices. White noise is specifically sounds such as running water, rain, wind, and so on, which are so normal that they’reeasily dismissed. This can also apply to a simple desk fan or an air purifier that will supply dull noise, but a pair of headphones can be even more efficient. Some rain
sounds can help to not only block outside noises, but also create a more tranquil mood that allows you to focus and complete your task.

2. Get Out of Dodge

Sometimes the best approach is the most direct approach, and if you are one of those people who find music and white noise as distracting as the noisy coworker, you may need to take the situation by the reins and find a more obvious solution.

– Ask your manager to move you to a different space. Your productivity level benefits or harms the entire business, so if you’re suffering from distractions and are unable to deliver the necessary work, your manager is suffering too. By approaching your boss and letting them know that a noisy coworker– who may or may not be named – is making it difficult to work, they can move you to another area, eliminating the problem with advantages for not only you but the entire company.

– Get to work early or stay late.

Midday is known as the most prime hours for work, as the sun is high, the sleepiness of the morning has faded, and the afternoon lull has yet to set in. Because of this, you might find your noisy coworker is a lot less active and a lot less loud in the mornings while everyone is still easing into the day. This makes it an ideal time for you to begin your projects, allowing you to complete vital tasks that require concentration before the distracting person arrives. Additionally, while no one likes staying late, if you continue to work after your coworker has gone home, you’ll have a quiet office that allows you to keep your priorities in order, leaving the noisy midday for less important tasks or even some web-surfing.

3. Take Action

If these more docile solutions have not earned a result, or perhaps they simply aren’t your style, you can always resort to the fastest, most direct, and – nine times out of time – most effective solution.

– Ask them to quiet down. While there are certainly people who must have a patent on being obnoxious, many others are unaware they’re being so noisy. Perhaps they have an unusually loud voice, think that communicating on speaker boosts productivity, or that everyone works in a loud environment as well as they do. In these cases, they are simply trying to do their job well and do not realize they are preventing you from doing the same. By simply mentioning the problem to them and asking them to lower their loud activities, the entire situation can be resolved.

– Ask a manager to speak with them. If you find confrontation as appealing as walking on hot coals, or your coworker does indeed have a patent on being obnoxious, the next best step is to bring the issue to the attention of your manager. At this point, your manager can speak with the employ with a certain degree of authority, resolving the problem that may have caused derision or confrontation between two employees of equal status.

Noisy co-workers are as helpful for productivity as a one-man-band in your living room is helpful for sleeping, but there’s no reason to accept an inability to focus. By applying a few of these three tips, you can see the problem resolved, your productivity boosted, and perhaps a better workplace environment – since everyone else can also enjoy a reprieve from the noise. If the noise is still unbearable, you may want to look into cubicle extenders or panels. OBEX Office Panel Extenders offers a large variety of office panel extenders to fit any cubicle or desk.

How Office Furniture Color Can Affect the Tone of Your Work Place

18 November 2015Mark Canavarroworkplace aesthetics, workplace culture, workplace privacy No comment

What is Color Really?

Colors are different frequencies of light whose spectrums run from the lowest, which are in the red to orange. The middle spectrum is yellow to green. The highest is the blue to violet frequencies. The human eye is a remarkable natural phenomenon of nature. It sees 10 million distinct colors.

Many businesses and corporations believe in, and swear by the emotional value that colors hold for industries like: Interior design, marketing, businesses and their offices, and even in the prison system to influence and control prisoners adverse behaviors.

The Psychological Effects of Colors

Blue Tones: If one is trying to achieve a cooling, calming effect in a stressful environment, whether in work or in numerous business situations, blue tones are the way to go. Blue tones are soothing and are good for high tension and crowded areas, which makes them great for places with standing lines of customers like banks and movie theatres. Blue is also the number one choice when people are asked what their favorite color is.

Relaxing Greens: Greens are also similar to blues. Greens give an air of reassurance, and of course nature. Green is relaxing and is said to refresh one’s mood and mental stamina. Dark green instills concentration. Add some other colors in as well with the furniture scheme, or the mood could get muddled from too much browns in the room.

Red Tones: The fiery energy of red tones in furniture is great for motivation and productivity. Red is a power color, good for an office of authority. Reds are also emotional as we all know, celebrated as the symbol of the heart, which will add an air of caring to a business or organization. Red is an aggressive color, though, so make sure you don’t go overboard.

White: A clean color, hygienic, and hospital like. White is a no distractions color. White is definitely better when suited to a doctor’s office, rather than a business office. White can come off to customers or clients as being too cold and unimaginative. White also gets dirty far too quickly when it comes to the office.

Black is Black: This color is better for the ceilings of warehouses. It is great for a men’s suit or at funerals, but not for furniture in a business, unless it’s a nice leather couch, but black instead of brown with leather still either gives that dark biker look in an office, or a mortuary waiting room. Black can be great for going to sleep, but it can also be a negative influence to some psychologically in a deeply depressing way.

Dismal gray: This color is perceived as totally neutral. This is why there are no proven psychological attributes of gray that are known. It is a lack of any color in its form – And therefore nothing. Gray can be depressing as anyone from Seattle can contest to. Gray is dull and listless and not appropriate in office furniture unless in small amounts.

The Purple Peace Train: Purple is a peaceful color, and a favorite for kids, just look at Sesame Street and the use of purple to instill non-threatening laughter for small children. Purple is a fun color that tells people that you are a young vibrant company that really knows the times and what other young people want. This is a great Tech color for up and comings. Fun, vibrant, new, just don’t try to pull off purple in a serious environment. It is hard to keep a straight face with purple office furniture. Purple is also attributed to reflection and contemplation, making it a meditative color, perfect for a break room at a contemporary office environment.

Vibrant Orange: Just as Home Depot gets your attention with a loud orange color logo, transmitting home value, knowing how color affects your customers is not just good decorating skills, it is good business! It can be a matter of boosting workplace productivity up to 20% if implemented in the right optimum working environment. Orange instills low cost, regular folks, good values. Orange is also festive and can brighten up a room when needed. If one needs cheerful in an office setting, orange is your color.

Everyone has a deep personal love of color and cultural associations that affect their experiences and perceptions of life. Believing in a subconscious connection with color is not that far-fetched. Influencing your office with color also influences how people see and instantly perceive your company. You normally only have one chance to impress in business. Make sure to give yourself a well prepared psychological advantage. Yellows oranges, reds, and several other popular colors play more of a part in our everyday lives than we sometimes even realize. But in the subliminal world of marketing, that’s a good thing for you and your business office.

3 Reasons Why Office Noise Can Reduce Productivity

4 November 2015Mark Canavarronoisy office, workplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

Noisy, talky, and Mr. inconsiderate! Know these three coworkers? Some people at work seem to have no consideration when it comes to other people in the office trying to work. Noisy people top the main complaints from office employees, about the distractions at work that reduce their productivity rates.

An article in the Journal of Applied Psychology on, Stress and Open-office Noise, concluded what many of us already knew from experience – “Noisy coworkers can make it impossible to work.” The study of forty office workers found that workers in noisy open space type office settings, had reduced motivation factors; in other words, low productivity! Open space office formats, are notorious for being noisy but interactive workplaces. But even if you’re trapped in your own personal box in a standard cubical farm office layout, noise is still a factor in distracting and reducing productivity when excessive noise travels across the office room. Here are three reasons why office noise can reduce your productivity.

1. Lost Concentration

A 2015, BBC News Business article, quoted Professor Gloria Mark of the Department of Informatics at the University of California as saying that. “Email, social media, notifications, and countless other digital distractions are eroding our ability to concentrate on individual tasks in the 21st Century.” I think all of us can agree that our well-meaning social media electronics get in the way with what could be productive work lives, especially when we get too attached to them – OR IN WORSE CASE SCENARIOS, WAY TOO OBSESSED!

There is a time for social media and it isn’t in the workplace. Social Media is best enjoyed at home relaxing after work or on the weekend. The only internet action that should be going on at work, is either accessing something for a client or researching something for your work, not playing Candy Crush, or posting something on Facebook like: “Hey Kickin it at Work bro!, I’m Sooooooh Booooored.” Shut it down and remove the temptation to social media.

Cellphones are just as bad. Unless it’s a work phone, turn it off! If it is a work phone, keep personal phone calls off of it. Many of us have kids in the workplace, but the one’s that do, also know of all the needless “Can’t Wait!,” supposed emergencies that kids call into your work for on your cellphone, just because they want to go to their new friends’ house for movie night. Don’t think your boss doesn’t notice it too, or that it doesn’t influence him on your quarterly or yearly work review.

2. Hindered Communication

The second most irritating concentration and customer service breaker is not being able to hear what either your coworkers are saying, or more importantly, what your clients or customers are trying to ask you over the phone. Technically, if an office needs a quiet zone or a phone room, there’s an excessive amount of noise going on in that workplace.

This is why it is better to at least insist on upholding some sort of moderate noise level. No one expects total silence in a busy office, but there should be some standard of expectations on your part, if expected by your employer to work to your fullest productivity level. It is only fair that you have some say in your working environment. This is why it is best to quietly try to solve any noise problems yourself before resorting to going to management.

Pull the offending excessive noise making worker aside first, so as not to create any opposite sides between other coworkers. Talk it out low keyed and rationally. If that doesn’t work, then in extreme measures, strength in numbers may be required in order to bring the problem up with management. Keeping calm is always the best policy when trying to communicate with others in the workplace. It is always important to get along, both for productivity, and the entire office morale.

3. Divided Community

The workplace is like a miniature community, even if it is a large corporation. Work sections are normally put together in specialized groups, and those groups divided into teams. When excessive noise becomes a negative argumentative issue between two individuals or group, infighting becomes more prevalent in the workplace, and then productivity goes out the window.

Music is a wonderful thing, and it is tempting at work to kick up the tunes and get your work on. But the truth is music is a matter of taste. The feud between Rock and Rap has been going on since before some coworkers have even been born. The last thing a workplace needs is a running competition between two workplace factions who face off over Jamming vs. Bumping. Unfortunately, music can be very divisive. It can also be a major distraction and a productivity killer for other workers as well.

Excessive loud talking is also a persistent productivity drain at work. There are always those one or two people at work, that just don’t seem to get it that they can have a conversation without shouting it across the room while everyone else is trying to concentrate. These people are not hard of hearing, just hard headed. They just can’t seem to respect anybody else’s right to be able to focus on their work in peace. No one can possibly keep up with their productivity level with two bozos’ loudly talking about their antics over the weekend.

No one ever wants to get into a confrontation at work with another employee, but your job relies on your ability to produce, so it is unwise to just let it go while your production suffers. Stand up for yourself, but do it in a way that highlights your problem solving skills to your coworkers and employers, rather than get caught up in a problem at work over noisy coworkers continuing to ruin your productivity and peace of mind.

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