Do you see co-workers constantly distracted by noise, and maybe, other co-workers? Do you find yourself oftentimes distracted by the various noises of the office, something that broke your concentration when it mattered most? In the workplace, a constant buzz of noise can grate against an employee’s ears and affect the three major areas that are important in the workplace: stress, concentration and errors. It happens! There are several, sometimes dozens, of individuals in one area all with their own job to do, their own idiosyncrasies and personalities.
Concentration, Stress and Errors
There are three cornerstones, if you will, of what noise pollution can do: break concentration, cause stress, and cause errors. And they all work together as a vicious cycle, a vicious cycle that can, and has, hindered an employee’s performance.
It goes something like this: you are an employee and right outside your cubicle, you can hear a very loud conversation going on. Oftentimes, when your job involves some form of writing and typing, what you write and type could end up being what you hear. But thanks to co-workers failing to practice volume control, or taking their conversation somewhere else, you have now made an error. At first, it may not be a big deal, but what if you keep making more errors? This is going to cause stress and in turn, further mistakes.
At best, it could be seen as an inconvenience; their conversation won’t last forever. How about a different scenario? Imagine you are in the middle of making a sale and wouldn’t you know it, John is in your left ear, yapping about a sport you don’t care about. And since you can’t hear the customer’s request or concerns, they decide to hang up because they thought you weren’t listening. John just cost you a sale, and the company lost out on potential revenue. Scenarios like this are always happening to employees to varying degree. In fact, 33 percent of Americans, in the wake of their perceived poor customer service, will switch to another company for business. Imagine how many employees like John distracted others from getting their work done.
How Can Businesses Help?
Offering noise cancelling headphones is a start. However, a soundproof phone booth is a great investment for any company to explore. All the issues listed above are are soundproof phone booths are built to mitigate.
Soundproofing an employee’s office has led to concentration levels rising as much as 48 percent! This snowball effect caused then, in turn, decreases workplace errors by 10 percent, and relieving an employee of stress as much as 27 percent. And those conversations distracting conversations mentioned before? Companies can reduce conversation as much as 51 percent.
Soundproof phone booth for offices can, essentially, increase employee production overall. This is because soundproof office booths cultivate an environment free of noise. And if you wish to go further, adding a plant or two in soundproof phone booth office spaces has shown to reduce the effects of negative feelings anywhere between 30 to 60 percent; feelings like stress, anger, anxiety, and depression.
It only takes a small investment to build a phone booth and make it soundproof that could, in the end, benefit you company far more than you realize.