Distractions come in many shapes and sizes. When you’re trying to just get work done in an open office environment, the disruptions all add up to a productivity nightmare.

Squeaking ferret + chatty ferret-loving co-workers = One chaotic office.

In your business, it could be emotional support ferrets. (Did you know that a group of ferrets is called a “business,” by the way?  And if you haven’t read this piece by Patricia Marx in The New Yorker on emotional support animals, you should. It could be an emotional support llama.)  More likely it’s barking dogs, loud talkers or noisy celebrations. It doesn’t really matter if the interruptions are furry, human, or otherwise—they’re simply a problem in open offices around the world.

In a recent survey1, open office workers reported:

  • 55% are disrupted by noise multiple times a day
  • 94% believe they’d be more productive in a less noisy environment
  • 70% work for a company that has taken no action to remedy the problem

Keep in mind that it takes 23 minutes for an individual to resume a task after being interrupted.2  So every time you eye-roll at whatever interrupted your train of thought, there’s a third of an hour of productivity gone.  As an individual, it’s annoying.  For a company, it’s expensive.  Sitting at your desk, you can wear a headset (and we’ve got lots of suggestions for you there!), but if you want to get a small group to focus in this environment, it’s even harder.

But there’s hope: the smart huddle room. Imagine escaping into a hotbed of ideation, collaboration, and productivity. Call it a haven or a hideout, if you like. We call it Polycom Studio.

Polycom Studio is the USB video bar built for small rooms and big ideas. It makes connecting in huddle rooms easier than ever, with plug-and-play functionality that works with nearly any video platform and any budget—giving your team best-in-class audio, dynamic video, and zero distractions.

No ferrets. No noisy neighbors. Just small teams connecting without outside interference, so they can get stuff done.

And in case you need more proof on the open-office problem, here’s another alarming statistic. 99% of employees worldwide are distracted at work.3 This is the reality for more than 5,000 office workers around the world that we surveyed this year. More than a third of them are always or very often distracted. Yikes.

Most workers can’t escape the noise and interruptions around them. But yours can. Find out how in our eBook.

 

Sources:
1Source: “Managing Noise: Hear, Be Heard, and Focus,” Plantronics study, 2017.
2Source: “No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work,” by Gloria Mark, Victor M. Gonzalez, Justin Harris, University of California, Irvine.
3Source: “All Your Employees Are Distracted: The Realities of Today’s Open Office and What You Can Do About It,” by Future Workplace, April 2017, sponsored by Poly.

#OpenOfficePerils