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Speech Privacy
Implementing Speech Privacy in an Open Office
Open offices are commonplace these days. The vast majority of office buildings now have cubicles. Privacy is now often limited to middle management and high level executives, with most lower level employees shoved together in a single room. This can lead to serious distractions, as well as a major lack of privacy.
Employees need to have some level of privacy in their workplace. Although total privacy could be bad for several reasons, a certain level of privacy is important for employee morale, and also to protect company secrets. Total privacy can lead to decreased productivity, too many personal conversations taking place on company time, and the leaking of secrets by rogue employees.
You could invest in a sound blocking system, but these can be very expensive, and can take a while to install. Because these systems need to be installed into walls and ceilings, your office is probably going to be a bit chaotic and loud as the new stuff is installed. They also don’t work very well for cubicles, because there is no way to actually block the sound since the walls are very open.
You could try building more offices and eliminating cubicles in order to establish more privacy, but that just doesn’t make much sense for most companies. Smaller companies may not have the budget to have more offices, so cubicles may be their only option. Implementing speech privacy doesn’t have to be a complex and expensive process. A good sound masking system can be quite inexpensive, and can be very effective in reducing background noise and eliminating many overheard conversations.
Sound masking systems help block background noise by replacing it with white noise. This noise helps block the flow of most frequencies to the brain, reducing the level of noise that actually flows to the brain. Because the brain is receiving the frequencies from the white noise, the other sounds in the room are not as evident, as though they’ve been partially muted.
What this means is that most conversations will not be overheard, unless someone is making a specific attempt to listen in on that conversation. Employees won’t have to worry about another employee accidentally overhearing a personal conversation, and you won’t have to worry about that delivery boy hearing one employee reciting the company’s network password to another!
Unless you have a large budget that can handle the costs associated with building more offices or putting in expensive sound blocking systems, your best choice is going to be a sound masking system. They can sometimes be even more effective than sound blocking systems, yet they typically cost less and are generally much easier to install. If you’re worried about the privacy of your employees, as well as the protection of company secrets, it just makes sense to invest in a good sound masking system.
officeprivacy |
Latest page update: made by officeprivacy
, Sep 24 2008, 4:52 AM EDT
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Keyword tags:
Acoustic Privacy
Noisy Office
Office Acoustics
Office Noise
Office Privacy
Office Sound Masking
Sound Masking
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