Tag : noisy office

In 2012, Jason Fried at Basecamp wrote a short post that rocked the world of office culture. He proudly proclaimed the secret to a nice, quiet, productive work environment—following library rules in the office. For a blog post of only 100 words, it garnered a surprising amount of comment. In Jason’s view, this approach works very well. Employees are expected to keep quiet or whisper, to avoid interrupting, and to take louder conversations to a different area.

Not surprisingly, what seems like common sense provoked a firestorm of argument. The complaints were fairly predictable:

• Instituting library rules infantilizes workers
• Without the buzz of conversation, creative collaboration can’t happen
• There’s something very wrong in a workplace where everyone is forced to be silent
• Silence is more distracting than noise
• It would be boring to work in a quiet office

It’s Not as Bad as It Sounds

These comments demonstrate some misconceptions about the realities of properly-implemented library rules in the office. For example, they are really guidelines and not “rules” when you are working with adults. Obviously, you don’t have a supervisor going around “shushing” people. The point is to cultivate an environment where people understand the impact their noise has on their coworkers. No one is asked to be silent, just dial down the overall noise level for a quieter atmosphere.

Here are a few ways to transition to a more manageable noise level:

• Provide zones like the kitchen or break area (away from the concentrated work zones) where people are free to socialize at whatever volume they like.
• Set up part of the office with lounge-style furnishings for workers who use mobile devices and chat a lot. Those that prefer a heads-down workspace could have cubicles with high walls to shut out noise.
• Ensure there are private meeting rooms for teams that need to brainstorm. These spaces should be readily available for impromptu brainstorming. Coworkers should be encouraged to politely request that loud conversations be moved to one of these rooms.
• Let employees know that conference calls and other extended phone conversations should take place in phone booths or other enclosed areas to keep the shared workspace quieter and protect privacy.
• Post signs asking employees to remember to set their cell phones to vibrate at the start of the workday.
• Ensure flooring, ceilings, walls, and desk dividers or cubicle wall panels are selected in materials that reduce noise, making it easier to keep the workplace quiet.

A more polite and respectful workplace doesn’t have to crush creativity. In fact, when everyone has more mental space to think because they aren’t fighting the noise, you’ll find that employees are less stressed and more productive.

What does your office really sound like? If you had to recreate the ambience of your workplace, how realistic would it seem? Sound engineer Iwan Gabovitch has put together a pretty convincing 2 hour segment of office noises on “SoundLikeTube”. It’s a lengthy, looping clip that is designed for use in video or audio productions. Other suggested uses are:

• Playing it in the background when you need to pretend you’re at work
• Adding it to the ambient noise of your real office to make your business seem bigger
• Using it to feel less lonely at a work from home job

In fact, most of us tune out the noise in the office after a while (although it still creates stress at a subconscious level). Here are just a few of the sounds you might hear if you really start listening:

1. People talking (blah, blah, chatter, laugh, blah, blah)
2. Office printers running (whir, chug, chug—paper jam!)
3. Papers being shuffled (rustle, rustle, rustle)
4. Cell phones vibrating (that buzzing sound of a phone sitting on a desk is still audible with the ringer turned off)
5. Staplers (Whack! Breathless pause…whack!)
6. Keyboard and mouse (the click, tap, tap, tap, click never stops)
7. Music playing from the guy wearing headphones with the volume cranked up (either something you wish you could hear or something you’d like to block out.
8. Chip or snack containers—arguably one of the most annoying sounds in any office (crinkle, crinkle)
9. Air conditioning or heating (whoosh, whoosh, hum just at the edge of your hearing range)
10. File cabinet drawers opening and closing (scrape, thunk, scrape, thunk, someone please get the WD40!)

It’s a wonder anyone can work in an office with all that racket. If you’re ready to start cutting down on the distractions, OBEX can help. We can add height and additional sound reduction to your existing cubicle walls to limit office noise intrusion. For workstations without panels, consider our desktop mounted acoustic panels. Employees can choose to turn their desk into a cube and finally get enough peace and quiet to really concentrate. Click through to see our full range of cubicle panel extenders.

This year, a fresh crop of vendors is rising to address the challenge of office noise control in the modern workpsace. While providing separation between employees at the workstation level is important, there are many other areas of the office that can also be acoustically upgraded for better sound absorption. Here are a few of the newest items available for helping businesses keep the noise down.

See Through Doesn’t Mean “Hear Through”

Glass is a lovely architectural component, but it poses special challenges for acoustic control. If the glass is too thin, sound can pass right through, and there’s no confidentiality. If it’s too dense, sound bounces right back into the workspace and reverberates. Unika Vaev is addressing this issue with “Glass Cover”—a 100% wool felt product that can be installed in attractive shapes and patterns to add visual interest and sound absorption to expansive glass walls.

Let the Sky Fold

SKYFOLD sounds like the name of a James Bond thriller, and the special effects are certainly something to see. This vertically foldable operative wall system accordions down from the ceiling, providing an instant reduction in noise on both sides of the panel. The STC rating is as high as 60, guaranteeing that meetings stay “top secret”. The system is electric rather than manual, for a very hush, hush operation. These motorized panels are available in a wide range of sizes and have even been installed at Texas A&M to divide up lecture rooms to host multiple simultaneous presentations.

Modern, Mobile, Modi

The Modi screen is a new take on the mobile acoustic privacy screen. It features a wood core with acoustic panels of wool felt (that seems to be the textile of the year), and can be provided in a number of different colors. The wheel can be outfitted in a contrasting hue for added whimsy. There’s a handy handle on the side so the screen is easy to tote from one workstation to another. This might even make a nice temporary door for a cubicle.

What new tools will you use to bring acoustic balance to your offices this year? Let us know in the comments.

In just one short month, it will be May (already?) Springtime has inspired countless songs, but not everyone has the chance to hear these lovely melodies. A full 12% of the US population suffers from hearing loss and can’t fully enjoy the wonderful world of sound. That’s 38 million people! While hearing loss can often begin at birth or occur later due to illness or aging, more than 25 million people in the US have noise-induced hearing loss. Because this problem is so widespread, May is designated as “Better Hearing Month”.

As a reminder that employers and employees should pay more attention to noise hazards, Miracle-Ear Foundation and 3M have put together a hearing loss prevention campaign. They call it “One Day without Sound”. On May 1^st, 2014, they are asking people everywhere to remove sound from their lives (as much as possible) for one full day.

Can You NOT Hear Me Now?

The soundless day provides an opportunity to educate communities and employers about the impact of loud noise. Participants can register at onedaywithoutsound.org to receive more information and prevention tips along with a pair of ear plugs that greatly reduce perceived noise levels. Slip these in your ears, and you’ll get a small taste of what it’s like to have noise-induced hearing loss. That certainly won’t make it possible to fully understand the frustrations of actual hearing impairment, but it may raise awareness about how much we take our good hearing for granted.

Keeping It Down at Work

More than 30 million Americans are exposed to potentially harmful sounds at work. That’s one very good reason to make sure your workplace has an up-to-date noise abatement plan. However, it’s not just the dangerous levels of noise that can be a problem. Many employees report high stress levels and difficulty concentrating from prolonged exposure to phones ringing, coworkers talking too loudly, or just the general hustle and bustle of the office. Our desktop panels and cubicle wall extenders help limit these chronic annoyances so employees can enjoy their workday more. Think of our OBEX panels as ear plugs for your employees’ workstations!

Yeah… that’d be GREAT…

We’ve run down a lot of Friday pet peeves over the last couple of months. maybe we’ve missed one that you’ve been dying to tell us about. Does your cubicle neighbor jog a mile before work and then forget to shower before coming in? Does your boss not seem to understand that standing outside your cubicle with a cup of coffee for an hour keeps you from being productive instead of the other way round? What eats you up about cubicle life? We want to know what is the single thing that would most improve your workplace if changed.

While you are thinking, we’ll throw one out there. So many offices we see have cubicles that don’t really serve any purpose, with walls that are so low they don’t block any noise or provide any privacy. A cubicle wall extender would make a huge difference in keeping the peace in a busy, noisy office! (You wouldn’t jump every time the dude with a cold snorts through his nose, for one thing…)

Why should your office depend on a cubicle layout rather then the trendier “open office design”? Two words – workplace distractions.  Although open office layouts have dominated office design style for several years, studies reinforce the fact that having a private space to work in increases employee productivity and satisfaction!

The most common source of distraction in open office designs is background noise. Even an overall noise level of just 55-60 dBA can cause major deterioration in employees’ ability to concentrate.”  The four culprits most likely to cause strife are ringing telephones, conversations between co-workers or between a coworker and a party on the other end of a phone, keyboard clacking, printer or computer noise, and sounds from outside.

Many office managers are prompted to tell new employees “You’ll get used to it”, but the opposite is actually true – many employees become more annoyed and distracted by excessive background noise the longer it goes on.

Converting from an open office design to a cubicle layout by using panel extenders and cubicle height extensions can greatly increase employee’s sense of privacy and reduce the amount of noise from adjoining co-workers and common spaces.

In addition to using panel extenders and privacy panels to give each employee their own sound baffled workspace, creating quiet areas away from noisy equipment and other people allows for serious phone calls, focused programming tasks or writing work. Printers and copiers can be relegated to a separate area so the noise they make is less distracting, noise cancelling headphones can be provided to employees on request, and phones chosen that have adjustable ringtones that are less obnoxious than standard default.

The conversion from open office to cubicle format may not be instantly accepted by employees, but as long as open common areas and comfortable break rooms are maintained to get employees “out of the box” during breaks and lunchtimes there should be a short adjustment period followed by acceptance and embracing of the new layout.

Overall, cubicles cut down on distraction in the workplace and will improve overall efficiency and employee morale. Consider trading in your open office design for a more practical layout, and cut down on constant distractions throughout the day without making workers feel overly boxed in.

Last week, we looked at some sofa-style lounge offerings that incorporate privacy panels. But the Coalesse collection takes things even further with the new “Work-Lounge” that can be equipped with a felt canopy. This design looks like something you might see in a beauty salon. Only, instead of drying and setting your hair, the giant cone over your head works to block out noise and other distractions. You can see a 2 minute animated video showing all the cool features of this chair right here.

Users can sit back, relax, and pull the canopy down to give them privacy even in a noisy, open workspace. There’s a light inside the felt dome to provide enough illumination to work by. It also features a bracket to hold mobile devices for hands-free conferencing. When it’s time to rejoin the “meat world” and collaborate in person, the canopy can be pushed back out of the way. Although this revolutionary concept made quite a splash at NeoCon 2013, it won’t be available for purchase through Steelcase’s Coalesse division until 2014.

One Chair, Many Options

The design is by Jean-Marie Moussad who envisions the chair bridging the gap between work and life, comfort and industry, privacy and teamwork. The lounge chair can be used alone for relaxation. However, it turns into a comfortable workstation with the addition of a height adjustable swivel table affixed to one arm. This small worksurface can be brought in close to support a relaxed work posture (much like the flexibility provided by the Gesture task chair). A storage ottoman completes the set by offering a space to store documents or devices and providing a place to prop up your feet.

The swivel base of the chair has auto-return for ease of movement, the headrest has a removable pillow insert for ergonomic customization, and the base has a cord pass-through to charge devices. All in all, this piece of lounge furniture appears to be a one-stop experience for work and play. If you pull the canopy down and turn off the light, you could probably even catch a few z’s there too.

With the holidays coming up, you’re probably thinking about what gift to offer your employees for all their hard work. Gift cards for major retailers are OK (as we’ll discuss below), but they’re pretty generic. Foodstuffs from candy and cookies to a Christmas turkey may seem like crowd pleasers, but employees with dietary restrictions from gluten intolerance and diabetes to vegetarianism would feel left out. A cash bonus is always appreciated. But then you might feel pressured to match or exceed that amount each year – even when economic circumstances change. Key chains, coffee mugs and other tchotchkes don’t express how much you value your workers (unless you think they’re basically worthless).

Gifts for Play

So, what do you give your employees this year? It’s nice to start with a token present that workers can use to have fun outside of work. If you have a small business and know your employees well, you can choose a specific gift certificate to their favorite ‘watering hole’ where everyone gathers for lunch or happy hour. That shows you’ve been paying attention to what they like. If you have a larger business, a gift card that can be used online (Amazon.com, Target, etc.) can come in handy. They can spend it however/whenever they like and the dollar amount doesn’t have to be too high to make it a nice gesture.

Gifts for Work

As an employer, you also want to make coming to work every day more pleasant for your workers in the coming year. So, doing something to improve the workplace over the long term is another thoughtful and appropriate present. If your employees have been struggling with noise and privacy concerns in an open environment or one with low cubicle walls, panel extenders or desk-mounted privacy panels would be a welcome workstation bonus. We’ve even got these products in red and green if you wanted to do a holiday theme. Of course, since you’ll be using these all year round, it’s probably smarter to just pick a color that matches your décor. You can shop our selection of classically muted fabrics or order panels in a custom color, textile or design.

CC license image courtesy of Flickr user danperry.com

Software developers are some of the most vocal opponents of noisy workplaces. That’s because they do work that requires a great deal of prolonged concentration. Any interruption can make them lose track of what they were doing. Then, they have to backtrack and pick up the thread of their thoughts to get reenter the programming “zone”. If you have ever used a piece of software that was buggy, you may need to blame the programmer’s work environment rather than the programmer. Employees in this industry suffered more than most when businesses started doing away with private offices for all but the most senior staff. Suddenly, they were expected to work in an open space with little or no protection from the constant distractions around them. Is it any wonder they complain?

Enter the Workplace Manifesto

In response to these challenges, Jeff Atwood created a “Programmer’s Bill of Rights”. It lists the bare minimum requirements that employers should provide for software developers to be successful at their jobs. The demands aren’t really outrageous. It’s basics like a decent office chair and a fast internet connection for research that programmers really want. “Right” number 6 is about workplace quality:

“Every programmer shall have quiet working conditions. Programming requires focused mental concentration. Programmers cannot work effectively in an interrupt-driven environment. Make sure your working environment protects your programmers’ flow state, otherwise they’ll waste most of their time bouncing back and forth between distractions. “

The original post was written back in 2006. The trend toward open office designs has only become more prevalent since then, so this blog post is actually more timely than ever. These may not be inalienable rights, but they are good things to provide if you want employees to be able to do their jobs “right”.

Employers Can Do Something About All This

In another of Jeff’s posts, he describes a company that hired a fancy consulting firm to uncover the top complaints a cadre of more than 1000 programmers had about their job. When the results came in, the noisy and distracting environment was at the top of the list. The company shrugged its shoulders and said there was nothing they could do about that. Fortunately, they are wrong. There are steps virtually every employer can take to minimize noise and distractions. Our privacy panels and cubicle extenders are a good example of where to start.

Here at OBEX, we point out the problems with open offices pretty frequently. But we actually do get what office space designers are trying to achieve. We think collaboration is great and that many workplaces could benefit from encouraging more of it. We just think there are ways to accomplish this objective without sacrificing privacy and noise control. For example, today’s web and mobile based collaboration applications can help bring employees together without forcing them into such close, unshielded proximity.

These days, many people really do feel connected as long as they can interact via social media. In the workplace, that can be a dedicated intranet platform like SharePoint. There are even project collaboration platforms designed for specific industries (for example, Atlassian’s Confluence is ideal for software development firms). When you take collaboration online, you get all the buzz with none of the noise. Even better, your employees can work together any time, in the office or on the go.