Confidentiality:
Do you ever stand at the window of the pharmacy, or, at the front reception desk of your doctor’s office, how about at your bank teller’s window dealing with a personal or confidential issue? When standing there, did you ever wonder about who could hear your conversation? What information or details may be revealed no matter how quietly you try to speak ? If you are a provider, how do you think your clients feel inside your office? Safe and comfortable ? Or, exposed and on display ?
Keeping conversations private is a big concern for many businesses and service providers. To combat this, architects have built in quiet areas for work spaces. However, these designed “Quiet Space” offices only exacerbate the issue of trying to have a private conversation. If it is too quiet the sound of the conversation carries across the distance of workspaces.
There is a simple and affordable solution for banks, pharmacies, doctor/dentist offices, loan companies, counselors, attorney offices, real estate offices, etc., to remove the potential for overheard conversations. Implementing a speech privacy system will fill in the sound spectrum in these areas with a barely perceptible low-level background noise. This will serve to render conversations unintelligible in the area covered. The masking sound the emitters of a privacy system produce won’t cancel those intruding voices, but will cover them up.
Creating a comfortable space for clients and customers to feel safe is essential for repeat business. Speech privacy is a simple solution that works toward that goal.
Productivity:
Other benefits to speech privacy systems include producing better productivity. When you think about the entire workforce of the US, a majority of them work in open office environments or large spaces with lots of desks and cubicles. Most of those are employed at what’s called information workers, dealing with informational tasks, inputting and retrieving data.
Dictionary.com defines productivity as: the quality, state, or fact of being able to generate, create, enhance, or bring forth goods and services. The more focus directly on the task, generally, the faster that task is performed and the more an employee gets done, the more productive he/she becomes.
Worker distractions are a major cause of productive downtime. General office noise, a conversation a few cubicles down, or that phone ringing on someone else’s desk are examples of things that can cause a distraction. Studies have shown that “conversational distractions” are the biggest cause of lost productivity because they increase worker errors and worker stress levels, and consequently decrease worker focus. Many modern offices are designed to eliminate much of that noise by creating a “quiet workplace”, but actually effectively completing the reverse due to any and every noise (the proverbial pin drop) being heard anywhere in the room, thus creating the distraction the quiet space sought to avoid.
The best and only way to achieve the balance between too loud and too quiet is by creating and increasing background noise. This sound covers other noises with different frequencies produced by ceiling mounted emitters that are evenly spaced creating a balanced spatial uniformity. Using a product like Voice Arrest from Speech Privacy Systems is a very affordable and easy application to achieve confidentiality and productivity goals while eliminating conversational distractions. Installation is easy with no downtime and very non-intrusive installation methods.
Other institutions who should consider this technology are; schools, libraries, government buildings, call centers, executive offices, financial institutions or anywhere focus is threatened or confidentiality is key.
For additional information on Speech Privacy Systems go to: www.speechprivacysystems.com or contact ECS today.
(Article by Charles Bressler – ECS Account Manager)