I've been in the commercial audio system business for a couple of decades.
In my early inexperienced days I remembered that I was on an appointment with a prospective client one Tuesday to tour through a large office area that contained a "sea" of cubicles as far as you could view. This was a call center that housed about 150 people. You'd need a map to find your desk. Looked like a massive condo development where every house was the same color. I was there to visit this office to recommend a ceiling speaker layout for occasional voice paging. I was also going to try and talk them into using it for music as well.
Perhaps they were also trying to cover up that loud air conditioning sound that I was hearing overhead. Why would this Fortune 500 company put up with that whooshing HVAC system that obviously needed servicing?
I asked my contact about installing something to play music through the system I was going to propose, "as it's obvious that you also need to cover up the sound of that AC fan". He looked at me with a strange stare and told me that sound was an important element of this open cubicle environment here in this division. This was their sound masking system. What is a sound masking system? I had to get back to my office and ask my sound designer. I'm intrigued, and if I'm now in the audio design business, I better find out what's going on here. The sound designer must be holding out on me with this information!
Ok, enough background on my sound masking ignorance. What I learned after this experience, that you may already have figured out, is that a sound masking system broadcasts
white noise through a specially designed speaker system. This "raises" the ambient noise levels in a working environment to help mask the random distracting noises that would be much more disturbing to the occupants of that office area without it.
I recently read that up to 30% of an employee's productivity is lost due to office distractions: conversations, copier noise, phone ringing, walking on hard surfaces nearby, etc. Seems to me that this is a lost fact of office life.
Who uses (or should use) sound masking?
With the new laws and sensitivity surrounding privacy, employers have two reasons to consider adding sound masking into their workplaces:
1. Reduce noise distractions.
2. Increase speech privacy.
Many of you probably use fans (as we do) in our bedrooms to cover up traffic noise, talking, or barking dogs so you can sleep undisturbed. You may not have realized that you installed a sound masking system in your home to do the same thing businesses are doing.
You won't completely eliminate office noises, but think about this: a dropped stapler or a shoe heel walking on a hard floor nearby are not nearly as JARRING to an employees concentration when sound masking is present, as when that sound happens when the office ambient noise level is near silent. For you technical freaks, the spike in decibels is much more prominent in the silent office, therefore much more distracting to the captive employee in the cubicle nearby.
Banks have been building branches on nearly every street corner in recent years. The investment to have a neighborhood presence is valuable to them, but with today's open office environment, speech privacy is almost non-existent. It's also hard for an employee to conduct phone business with the entire branch listening. Sound masking opportunity here.
The healthcare field also has laws protecting privacy, but few people know that the HIPAA laws also pertain to the spoken word as well. Cubicles don't assist with speech privacy as much as managers would like. Another sound masking opportunity.
Overall, if I work in an office where I can hear conversations with full intelligibility up to 30 feet away or more, sound masking can cut that in half. I may be able to hear your voice, but if I cannot understand your conversations because the white noise interferes on purpose, then over time, my brain will begin to tune your conversations out, and I become more productive. Everybody wins. It's far less expensive than building office walls, and more fun.
Banks - a hybrid between a retail store and an office. They are still popping up like fast food joints on every corner. They spend big $$$$ to get a local neighborhood presence and your attention. But due to costs, the branches are small and fast-food sized. So guess what happens to conversations in that small lobby? We all get to listen in. Sub-conscious or not, you gotta talk, and we are all going to hear you. Social Security numbers, someone's social life - the list is endless. And not private. Cubicles aren't going to do it except make you THINK we can't hear. Kind of like a toddler who thinks if she or he can't see you, you aren't there. Ok, let's get serious.
