Technically Speaking Archives - Alamon

Solving the Workplace Speech Privacy Crisis

Alamon — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 15:51:32 +0000

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

Solving the Workplace Speech Privacy Crisis

December 8, 2020/Enterprise Technical Services News, Technically Speaking

When you think of an office building, chances are you picture private offices along the walls and cubicles taking up the open space in the middle. Some tech companies and startups have adopted communal tables instead of cubicles, with other offices taking over older buildings with open rafters and no florescent lights. Across all office types, you can expect to find glass-walled (or thin-walled) private offices and conference rooms.

What’s the commonality between all office environments? More likely than not, dissatisfied employees. Not because of their projects, bosses, or even coworkers, but because their office space lacks speech privacy. Low cubicle partitions, while great for collaboration, do nothing to block the sound of your neighbor talking loudly to their clients. The glass walls and windows make for a modern feel, but conversations literally ricochet off them for the entire office to hear.

While most facility managers, HR managers and IT managers are aware that noise distractions are a problem, they are typically not aware that there is a cost-effective solution that even a COO on a tight budget would approve. They may also be unaware that the best person to solve this problem is the company’s low voltage or telecom cabler. The solution is called sound masking, and it is one of the most effective and efficient solutions to any company’s noise problem.

The Speech Privacy Problem: Dissatisfied Employees

The Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley surveyed more than 25,000 workers in more than 2,000 buildings to determine what the key environmental issues were for workers. They discovered that of all the environmental factors workers encounter – general maintenance, office layout, furnishings, thermal comfort, air quality and lighting – speech privacy was the factor they were the most dissatisfied with.

What is speech privacy? Simply put it’s the ability (or lack thereof) of an unintentional listener to understand another person’s conversation. Being dissatisfied with your level of speech privacy means you’re overhearing conversations that aren’t meant to be overheard. This is understandably distracting and annoying.

The results from The Center for the Built Environment survey have been confirmed study after study. Researchers in Australia at the University of Sydney found that lack of speech privacy was the number one complaint among cubicle workers and open-plan employees, with 60% and 50% respectively describing it as a major issue. The University of California Irvine discovered that employees are interrupted once ever eleven minutes, and it can take as much as 23 minutes to get fully reengaged with their work after the interruption.

The Speech Privacy Problem: Lost Productivity

In a recent study presented to the International Congress of Noise as a Public Health Problem, researchers found that on average employees wasted 21.5 minutes per day due to conversational distractions, making lack of speech privacy the number one cause of reduced productivity. An additional 2014 Steelcase/Ipsos study found that employees lost as much as 86 minutes per day due to noise distractions.

Even using conservative estimates, this loss of productivity adds up to big monetary losses for companies. 21.5 minutes daily is roughly 4% of an average employee’s work day (based on an 8 hour day). Some quick math shows that a company with 100 employees and an average employee salary cost of $50,000 is losing $200,000 a year in lost productivity.

The Speech Privacy Problem: Legal Ramifications

Lack of speech privacy extends beyond just a distraction for employees and an expense to employers, it also means that employees can overhear conversations they should not hear.
As walls to private offices become cheaper and thinner, a closed door no longer guarantees speech privacy (and in fact may be worse, as it creates an illusion of privacy).

Think of the HR nightmares that could come out of conversations overheard by the wrong people! In some cases, not providing sufficient speech privacy can even be illegal. This includes any office where medical information is shared, such as conversations between doctors and patients, who need to ensure privacy in order to comply with HIPAA regulations. The regulations don’t stop at HIPAA, however. The Gramm Leach Bliley Act requires financial firms to protect clients’ non-public financial information, including how that information is collected. FERPA is a federal law that protects the privacy of a student’s education records. In short, failure to safeguard discussions about medical, financial and other sensitive subjects from being overheard by others is illegal, and potentially a huge liability for the company affected.

Sound Masking: Solving the Speech Privacy Problem

Although everyone knows that office noise is a problem, few know there’s a solution to the problem beyond giving every employee a private office or building higher cube walls.

The easiest acoustical treatment to implement to combat a lack of speech privacy is called sound masking. Despite having been around since the 1950s, the public at large is generally unaware of the technology. Essentially, sound masking is the process of adding a low level, unobtrusive background sound to an environment to reduce the intelligibility of human speech and noise distractions in that environment. If you’re thinking of “white noise,” you’re close. We’ll cover that in a moment.

While it may sound counter-intuitive to add sound to the environment to make it quieter, that’s exactly what happens. In effect, the introduced masking sound is specifically tuned to the frequencies of human speech to cover up, or “mask,” excess speech noise and make the acoustical environment more comfortable. Installing a sound masking system involves cabling work above the ceiling tiles and connecting the cables to a centralized control module, usually housed in the server room.

Sound masking does not cancel speech, it simply shortens the distance from which a talker can be overheard. Most office environments allow speech to travel 50-100 feet. With sound masking, that distance is cut closer to 15 feet, and overheard speech is less intelligible than it would be normally. This means an employee might still hear that a conversation is occurring, but they can’t understand exactly what’s being said, meaning the conversation is easier to ignore and is less distracting.

Sound Masking: It’s All About Uniformity

Despite the misconceptions of many, sound masking is not white noise. White noise, if amplified to an effective masking volume, would actually be very unpleasant. Think of a radio playing hissy static, when not tuned to a station. Proper sound masking, on the other hand, is more pleasant sounding and usually barely noticeable, similar to the sound of airflow through a vent. Different manufacturers engineer masking sounds in various ways, but they all target a sound quality and decibel level that masks the intelligibility of the human voice.

For proper installation of a sound masking system, the ideal sound masking spectrum must be established and then amplified to the right level. Once that step is complete, the technology integrator must ensure that level remains consistent throughout the office.

If the sound masking is too quiet it won’t be effective, and if it’s too loud it will be a distraction itself. The proper level for sound masking is no louder than about 48 decibels (dBA). In comparison, an office conversation between two people next to each other is about 60 dBA. The ration of voices to the masking noise ensures that sound masking will not affect the intelligibility of two people talking to each other, but will reduce the ability of someone else to overhear the conversation from 15-20 feet away.

Sound Masking: Proper Zoning

It is also important to properly zone an office space to create an ideal sound masking level. The system must be flexible enough to accommodate varying architectural spaces, taking into account the room size, ceiling height, furnishings, acoustic treatments and more, while also changing levels in order to provide a consistent sound field. This is done by splitting the system into smaller zones, so that spaces with similar acoustics can be grouped together and the system can be tuned for each environment.

An easy example is shown below where the open center, private offices and corridors are each on separate zones. Each of these environments is acoustically different, so it’s important to be able to adjust the masking for each space without affecting the other zones. This doesn’t mean micromanaging every couple of speakers—a good sound masking system will deliver consistent sound directly into each acoustic space, while still allowing for similar spaces to be grouped together as zones. As uniformity is the name of the game, end-user control is hardly ever necessary or recommended. Most employees won’t even notice the sound masking system, and once installed it should require about as much routine maintenance attention as the exit signs.

Sound Masking: Not Just For Offices

Although commercial office spaces provide typical environments for sound masking, other industries and vertical markets can also benefit from the technology.

Educational institutions, such as computer centers, testing rooms and libraries are perfect environments for sound masking because they are typically areas where students would appreciate fewer noise distractions. Organizations with call centers can benefit from sound masking by making it easier for employees to hear their calls and keep customer information private. Financial institutions such as commercial banks find sound masking an effective way to keep sensitive financial data safe from prying ears. Also, as mentioned previously, the healthcare industry needs to protect speech privacy to ensure not only patient confidentiality, but also to help patients in hospital rooms rest and recuperate with fewer noise distractions.

Sound Masking: The Lay of the Land

Sound masking systems range in complexity from systems with dozens of components, lots of IP addresses and heavy programming to those consisting of a simple wall-mounted control module, familiar category cables and easy, daisy-chained loudspeakers. For most sound masking systems, the speakers are managed by a central control module that is usually housed in the server room or a similarly out-of-sight location. Control modules can be connected to a network and be password-protected, but since sound masking systems are generally a “set it and forget it” kind of device, many end-users choose to leave the controllers off of their networks entirely. The only day-to-day changes in a sound masking system might be to shift the volume level down slightly at night so the security guards can hear across the office, but even that can be set to run automatically when the system is installed. It’s worth noting, however, that many systems also offer paging and background music capabilities as well, and that integration may dictate where a controller is located. Sound masking systems do not interfere with any other mass notification or paging systems that a company might have installed.

Sound masking systems generally fall into two types. There are “direct field” systems, where speakers are installed into ceiling tiles (or mounted to beams and posts for open ceilings) and emit sound directly into the environment. These generally use a larger number of small speakers and require less tone adjustment since the sound plays directly into the occupied space. There are also “in-plenum” systems, where speakers are installed above the ceiling tiles and sound is reflected off of the ceiling deck and into the environment below. These generally use a smaller number of larger speakers but require more tone adjustment since there are lots of obstructions in the plenum space (HVAC, cable trays, etc.) that affect the sound that pushes through the occupied space.

Each sound masking system on the market has its plusses and minuses – it’s really up to the integrator and the end-user to determine the system that will work best. The one thing all of the systems have in common is that they all require professional installation from an experienced cabling professional.

CONTACT ALAMON

Content courtesy Cambridge Sound Management

Alamon/Telmon is a certified Bi-Amp Cambridge partner offering highly effective solutions for Soundmasking and sonic control for a wide range of commercial environments.

Cambridge Sound Management, Inc. manufactures QtPro sound masking systems to help organizations across multiple industries protect speech privacy, reduce noise distractions, and fuel workplace productivity. Powered by direct-field Quiet Technology, QtPro works by emitting a uniform, barely perceptible background sound at the frequencies of human speech. Cost effective and easy to install, QtPro is deployed in hundreds of millions of square feet of space throughout the world including commercial organizations, healthcare facilities, financial services, government agencies, and educational institutions.

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The Convergence Revolution and the Future of Enterprise Commercial Space

Alamon — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 21:01:49 +0000

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

The Convergence Revolution and the Future of Enterprise Commercial Space

December 2, 2020 / Enterprise Technical Services News, Technically Speaking / by Alamon

Much is being said these days about the coming evolution of technology. This paper will provide an initial look ahead at how “soon to arrive” technology will impact the Enterprise Commercial workspace and serve as a foundation for a longer look at how the environment will change the way we approach where and more importantly, how we work.

Traditional brick and mortar facilities relied on static utility installations to support the “3 utilities”, namely HVAC, plumbing and electrical needs. Beyond that, technology needs for telephony and data as they emerged over time were addressed as an overlay to the building and when one aspect of technology was obsoleted or improved, it was done with little to no impact to the others. As time and technology moved forward, especially in the 1990’s and since then, they converged and voice and data platforms became interdependent on each other and grew far more efficient, requiring less space and power consumption while at the same time providing vastly improved performance. From an enterprise consideration, businesses have become far more dependent on technology for various means of support, both internally for administrative, financial and operating functions as well as externally supporting clients and to a large extent, the technology has become a part of the “product” that businesses are offering customers.

After the realization of the pandemic that is upon us, we are now confronted with the reality that the workplace has changed dramatically, and the old days are truly behind us now. “Work from home” concepts and strategies will now be considered a “must” in the IT planning and design discussions…

At this point in time, we have finally reached the era where technology has become the “4th Utility” and it is a vital component of successful operation in todays business climate. How Corporations are planning and deploying their “4th Utility” strategies now will have a major impaction on the cost, efficiency, and competitiveness of being in business in the near future.

The “4th Utility” hasn’t yet been given an officially recognized definition, but is universally considered to be comprised of a collaboratively environment that is servicing “connected users” consisting of a variety of both hardwired and untethered devices that provide streaming content, augmented and virtual reality and incredibly fast data delivery in a technology controlled shared workspace. In other words, “data everywhere for everyone”.

Before the arrival of COVID-19, we were already hearing buzzwords such as “5G” and “smart buildings, indicating that the changes were coming whether we liked it or not. After the realization of the pandemic that is upon us, we are now confronted with the reality that the workplace has changed dramatically, and the old days are truly behind us now. “Work from home” concepts and strategies will now be considered a “must” in the IT planning and design discussions and will cause the deployment of 4th utility in the workspace to gain significant speed for a number of reasons. First among the reasons is the flexibility and automation that these technologies bring will reduce the overall number of people required to service and support the buildings, as well as having a major impact on the expense of heating, lighting, securing and occupying it. The next reason is that by making more data available faster and including automation and cloud computing strategies into the IT support fabric, it will make the employees servicing customers from the corporate space more efficient, reduce the head count and ultimately reducing the overall amount of real estate space needed. Coupled with an effective work from home strategy that allows employees to access the network remotely, it gives the corporations the ability to dynamically scale the use of their real estate so that it can be used in the most effective ways possible.

But what are the actual building blocks of the “4th utility”? Please see the graphic below for a better visual:

As shown, it starts with a basic building services infrastructure, consisting of supporting traditional systems for HVAC, electrical, plumbing, fire alarm and other legacy systems. From there, it moves to the connectivity and communications layer, where things will quickly get much more interesting. Beyond your traditional LEC services delivery into your main telecommunications room to bring the outside connection to your cabled voice/data systems and the more recently added wireless networking on top of that, you are now also looking at adding in POE++ which adds the ability to support ever increasing amounts of electricity to network devices and others (more on that in a minute) and soon the IoT (“Internet of Things”) in which all manner of traditionally non-networked devices will be attached to a network. A common place example of IoT already found now are vending machines that report product inventory and revenue, temperature, and operating information to remote services through the network. Instead of having to dispatch a service technician to check on a machine or rely on employees to report troubles, the machine will advise the operator on a real time basis so that they can not only dispatch when there is an issue with the vending machine, it can also diagnostically report how the machine is operating so that before the machine malfunctions it can be repaired, often times saving in both repair cost and lost inventory. That is just one of many coming examples.

Another component of the communication layer is A/V and particularly video streaming. It is currently estimated that 82% of IP traffic will be video by 2022, with over 75% of the worldwide video traffic taking place over mobile devices (source: Cisco, VNI 2018; TIA Smart Buildings, 2019). That is not referring to people watching Netflix and Hulu, which they were already doing back in 2015 in huge numbers. The big increase in video consumption is in the corporate realm where connection with other employees and customers is increasingly being done in a collaborative manner over video conferencing and will only get more in-demand over time.

The topic of connectivity and communications is vast and easily the subject of many books and is well beyond a white paper providing an overview, so I will move on from there to the topic of building operating systems that control power, security and energy. The network fabric of the building is already expanding to not just communication for employees and occupants to use but to provide sensors that monitor when and where the employees are at so that companies only heat, cool and light occupied areas, which leads to significant utility bill reductions. Increasingly, building will also see much more reliance on networked capabilities using POE++ to support such things as low voltage LED lighting systems, security systems, workstation devices such as docking stations and video monitors, etc. POE ++ refers to” Power over Ethernet” and is an IEEE standard that most people are at least somewhat familiar with. It has undergone significant development in the last few years and is becoming a legitimate alternative to traditional high voltage electrical systems for many applications in the building and are far less expensive to both install and operate. They are also considerably more “green” and help corporations move towards “net zero” initiatives and use less energy resources, leading to again, less overall expense and in many cases, some unique tax advantages.

After the power and energy building block, the next levels are mostly concerned with using data for provide information and management of the building environment, creating the real basis of a “Smart Building”. Again, a picture is worth a thousand words:

If you are thinking that is going to take a LOT of network traffic to support, you would be right. In fact, the amount of data needed to support the coming onslaught of technology will challenge the traditional methods of connectivity, which brings me to the last topic, wireless cellular 5G. Changes in technology and user needs have already grown to a global mobile population of 3.98 billion unique users with 80% of all mobile use taking place inside buildings. It is estimated that monthly mobile data usage with surge to 98.34 GB/SIM by 2025 (source: Verizon 2019). To support the ever-increasing demand, carriers are deploying 5G infrastructure now and we will start to see a wide spread migration to it from 4G LTE as soon as they can get it built up, with an estimated tipping point occurring sometime in the next three to four years. Once 5G is deployed, again, the landscape for buildings will be changing for several reasons. First, 5G has limitations in terms of both distance and building penetration. Therefore, it will require a huge number of cell antennas installed outside to support the carrier networks and then most buildings will migrate to private 5G LTE wireless systems inside their buildings to support users. Once those become widespread, there will again be a migration in how user technology is deployed and the cost to scale will once again decrease while performance and efficiency improve.

In conclusion, this is not meant to be a comprehensive road map but a look ahead for conversation as to how to plan future IT deployment strategy. The face of IT continues to change as technological and economic factors hasten a converged infrastructure. Services that were once beyond imagination are now vital as technology plays an ever-greater role in modern business operations. Welcome to the convergence revolution!

About the Author

Scott Harrison, RCDD, is the Chief Marketing Officer for Alamon / Telmon.

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