Sound Masking & Hybrid Workplaces

More Flexibility Means a Less Predictable Office Soundscape

What about office noise? What about all the distractions at work—from mundane sounds, such as phones ringing, keyboard typing, coffee grinding and photocopier whirring, to loud conversations among colleagues—just lurking around to steal every worker’s focus across the open floor plan? In an office space with less walls and less boundaries, will employees be able to discuss private, sensitive matters, according to the level of confidentiality required? Will they feel comfortable in doing so?

Achieving Good Acoustic Privacy and Comfort at All Times With Adaptive Sound Masking Technology

Both too much and too little noise can be detrimental to the office worker experience and performance. And while most reputable sound masking systems out there are designed to perfectly even out your office’s sonic landscape, doing an especially great job at drowning out private and distracting conversations, how can such systems figure out how loud or quiet the office actually is on any given day, at any minute? How can sound masking be effective in both noisy and quiet conditions?

In today's hybrid workplace where two days are never quite alike, managing your sound masking system volume on a predefined schedule just won’t cut it. Your sound masking system will need to be just as flexible as your workspace. It’ll need to dynamically adapt its output to your ever-changing working environment, based on how loud and quiet specific work areas get throughout the day.

When the Office Space Is Near Full

On a busy day in the hybrid workplace, things will almost feel back to normal, if it wasn’t for the 1/2 gallon hand sanitizer jugs and the safety signage lying here and there. Employees will be going about their daily workload—answering phone calls, writing emails, attending presentations, finalizing important reports, collaborating on sales pitches, discussing tough challenges, and exchanging new ideas.

The office will be buzzing with all kinds of activities underway. And of course, the office will be noisy. The more the noisier, right? On such busier, noisier office days, the key challenge brought by activity-based working, and open offices in general, is rather simple:

Making sure that every employee can get in focus and innovate distraction-free amid a highly stimulating working environment.

So on such days, the right sound masking system will seamlessly blend in the relatively high office background noise level, while continuously adjusting itself to noisier spikes—typically arising from casual chitchats, loud voices, and verbal communication in general—and quieter lows.

When the Office Space Is Near Empty

Would you enjoy working in a pin-drop silent room, totally aware of everyone else’s presence, knowing full well that they too can probably hear you breathe, sneeze, cough, stretch, rummage in your drawers for a pen, and even think? Neither does the average office worker.

On a quiet day in the hybrid workplace, left partially empty by employees having decided to work remotely, those who need to sit in the office that day will find that even the faintest sounds become clearly audible. The ambient noise level will be exceptionally low that’s why. Remember those vast midterm exam rooms in college? It felt slightly uneasy, didn’t it? So when your quiet office gets too quiet, your main challenge is:

Helping office workers feel at ease, silently or not so silently, in their "own private bubble", oblivious to their surroundings.

On such days, your sound masking system will subtly increase the background noise level just enough to drown out the attention hogging sounds that no employee should be forced to clearly hear, without this little extra background noise becoming a source of distraction in itself.

How Hybrid Workspace Design and Sound Masking Technology Have Worked Hand in Hand for Over 10 Years

For many years, the Kokuyo Group had been a go-to resource for organizations looking to achieve more with less through the activity-based working model. They knew a lot about improving employee performance and well-being by giving them the choice to work however and wherever they see fit. And they certainly had innovative ideas on how future office designs could deliver this most sought-after workplace flexibility.

Activity-Based Working Without Compromise

But Kokuyo also knew full well that activity-based working and open work areas came at a certain cost: tougher acoustics, ever-fluctuating levels of distraction, a lesser sense of privacy, both visual and auditory, and potential confidentiality issues.

Meanwhile, as a world-renowned expert in acoustical engineering with over 20 years of innovations in workspace acoustics, sound measurements and noise mitigation, we at Soft dB knew a lot about solving the acoustical downsides of activity-based working environments.

Indeed, tomorrow’s relationship-driven workplace – with less walls, less boundaries, more space to collaborate, and designed with a premium on flexibility – didn’t have to come at the expense of sonic comfort and privacy. And so began a long and fruitful international partnership between Kokuyo and Soft dB. On one end, a team of experts passionate about taking workspace design to a new level, and, on the other end, a team of experts passionate about achieving superior architectural acoustics.

Acoustic Privacy and Comfort Without Walls

So for over 10 years now, Kokuyo has been helping companies of all shapes and sizes make the most of activity-based working, while integrating Soft dB’s patented sound masking technology, early in the office design process, to provide employees with:

• Just the right level of auditory privacy and anonymity, without the need for walls
• A place free from noisy distractions for deep focus, creative thinking and getting into flow
• The freedom to take and make phone calls, whatever their nature, without disturbing others
• The ability to openly discuss sensitive matters among colleagues and with superiors, without the fear of being overheard across the entire floor
• The power to be their own comfy self, extroverts and introverts alike – fidgeting around, thinking out loud, snacking on-the-go, sneezing, breathing, dropping a pen – all without becoming the office’s center of attention
• The right office soundscape, the right level of sonic comfort, that many previously thought to be practically unachievable in open-plan work environments.