Sidetracked

Did you know that the vast majority of your employees are distracted more than two hours every day? 2 hours is about the average 'time of distraction'. Most often than not, the culprits of this is technology - e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, IMs, mobile phones and others. However, they are not entirely to blame for this. Even if they can be a cause of distraction, technology is also what makes your company run as efficiently as it does now. We're not saying though that your workers aren't using technology for non-productive stuff, we're just saying that you can't eliminate technology in order to free them from distracting themselves.

Distracted Mouths

As technology plays a minor part in having their attentions diverted, what's the other cause of the problem? It is non-work related conversations that causes a big part of their time being wasted. Co-worker chatter, water cooler gossip, loud sales guys, and the like dominate employee distraction. However, it's hard for you to cut off these conversations, more so their conflicts. Additionally, even those who aren't engaging in these conversations are distracted due to the racket it creates. It's no wonder that there are employees who request for solo work time. This way, they can be free of the noise and concentrate on working alone. Far from being unreasonable, distraction-free solo work time seems like a pretty valid request.

How is this distraction-free solo work given?

What some companies do is they offer their conference rooms and mandate that employees turn their gadgets to silent mode or completely shut off. Another option that you have is sound masking. What sound masking means is that you produce low-level white noise via office speakers in the ceiling and it will be enough to mask unwanted and distracting noise. Sound masked offices have proven beneficial to employees as they have increased their productivity and efficiency.

So, if you want to tune out conversations to increase your workers' productivity, check out office sound masking options for your workplace.