Johannesburg, 23 Nov 2015
Steve is a sales representative at a large corporation, and despite his neighbouring colleague being a nice guy, his noise level on sales calls is constantly disrupting Steve's concentration and productivity.
Clare, an HR director, enjoys the atmosphere of her office's new open floor plan, but has been experiencing an increasing amount of migraines. She has been opting to work from home more often to combat the noise level she feels is affecting her health at work.
Workplace noise is a serious issue and should not be taken lightly. The World Health Organization Europe's 2011 report: "Burden of disease from environmental noise", analyses the relationship between environmental noise and health. The estimated cost of noise in Europe alone was $30.8 billion a year after calculating cost of lost workdays, healthcare treatment, impaired learning and decreased productivity due to noise.
To back up this staggering figure, a recent survey commissioned by Plantronics revealed 89% of British office workers stated office noise has an adverse effect on the quality of their work. They are not alone - 96.5% agreed in Germany and 93.5% in France.
Productivity is not the only thing affected by a noisy environment. Stress and physical ailments such as headaches and migraines are also listed as negative results. A workplace plagued by awful acoustics, noisy colleagues and other disruptive background noise can be hugely detrimental to a company's bottom line.
While office noise is not something that can be fixed overnight, the good news is that it can be remedied if a company takes appropriate action to "soundscape" its environment. Organisational challenges such as working in an open-plan office, working outside the office, or delivering effective virtual collaboration, all have their own unique noise issues.
Soundscaping can help optimise smarter working through bricks, bytes and behaviours.
Bricks - building blocks of smarter working
The normal office environment, whether it is the primary office, secondary, a nomadic office or at home, is often plagued with challenges for working - physical discomforts, high noise levels, missing key work tools, a lack of privacy and constant distractions. All of which can contribute to an unhealthy working environment.
Plantronics redesigned its offices using an acoustic zoning design to meet four critical new office workspaces based on insights from leading office design expert Jeremy Myerson. These zones help associates to: Concentrate, collaborate, communicate and contemplate in the most effective way.
* Contemplate - Time out space for creative inspiration, refuelling, relaxation (ie, taking a break from work).
* Communicate - Vibrant, busy areas for constant noise, group touch down zone (ie, caf'e, lobby), but also energetic voice calls, shielded from those who don't want to be hindered by such.
* Collaborate - Zones to work together (ie, work pods, touch-down benches/areas, meeting rooms).
* Concentrate - Quiet space for focused work (ie, monk cells, acoustic pods).
Another element of soundscaping a workplace environment is the creation of stellar acoustics within workspaces. In order to achieve this, companies can leverage the ABCs of space acoustics in their office design, which involves considering room layout, building materials or specialist technology that absorbs, blocks and/or covers distracting noise.
Bytes - Switching on the right technology
Crucial to implementing a healthy and productive workplace solution is addressing communication requirements for a workforce that centres on identity and presence for all associates, no matter their location.
Relevant technology, like headsets for enhanced audio experiences, combined with the right collaboration technology, like a unified communications solution, will give everyone an identity and presence, even those working remotely.
Adopting technology that enables the use of any device, with any application, within any location, no matter the noise level, is key. Unified communications can be achieved with solutions from Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, Unify, Alcatel-Lucent, Mitel and others. This enables laptops and/or a smartphone to become the primary work phone (ie, no desk phones and a headset a must), which allows associates to work from anywhere.
Behaviours - Blending old with new
Lastly, in today's ever-changing working environment, trust needs to be developed between manager and associate. Being creative and progressive with both facilities and use of technology can only go so far.
The relationship between manager and associate has to be based on trust, and to establish this, a focus needs to be on communication and training for all employees, ensuring a clear understanding of goals, practices and procedures within the business, no matter the chosen office environment of an associate.
Often, line managers are reluctant to change; they perceive they will lose control, cannot trust their teams, or will perhaps even lose status as a manager. The move to smarter working requires a shift in management style from 'controlling' to 'influencing'. It is imperative that companies provide effective management training to support this transition to enable high-performing distributed teams.
The vision for soundscaping is to develop a workspace (be it for associates, customers and partners) that delivers a positive contribution to our planet and is flexible in meeting current and future smarter working practices.
Creating a smart workplace means so much more than just facilitating functional offices. Remote working, noise disruptions and health implications are commonplace. Smarter working and soundscaping requires a complete management approach, one that associates and the organisation will benefit from in terms of productivity, health and workplace satisfaction.
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