You know it when you work in one. Silent offices can have a significant
negative influence on your employees, dragging down both morale and
productivity. Of course, you don’t want your workers to chat continuously about
issues that are not related to work. But the opposite extreme can be just
as detrimental. If you find yourself in a situation where no one wants to
talk, here are 5 ways you can avoid the
dreaded silent office syndrome.
1) Encourage Team-Building Activities
The more comfortable your employees are around each other, the more likely they
will be to engage each other during the day. Many office workers dread these
type of activities, but finding
the right ones can make the process fun for everyone involved.
If employee A has a question for employee B, but they haven’t interacted
much, the result is probably an email that adds to the office silence. But if
they know each other better, it may result in a quick walk over to discuss the
question in person. The result will be more productive and active workplace
interactions.
2) Provide Spaces of Privacy
Especially open offices often suffer from silence because of a perceived
lack of privacy. If you always feel like someone is listening, you feel less
comfortable striking a conversation, even if that conversation centers around
your work.
The solution to this wide-ranging problem is to create privacy spots in
which your employees can talk freely. Lounges, break rooms, and even conference
rooms to which your employees have easy access can all help to accomplish a
sense of privacy when needed, but without taking away from the benefits of open
offices.
3) Add Background Noise
Sometimes, the only hindrance to making any kind of noise is not wanting to
be the only one. In other words, a simple treatment to silent office syndrome
is providing some background noise that makes individual conversations less
likely to stand out.
Research
shows that while noise can negatively impact productivity, much of that
impact comes down to intelligibility. A single conversation is
distracting, which is why many workers don’t want to engage in it. But if that
conversation is only part of a cacophony of sounds, it will be more natural.
That’s why background noise, which can be as simple as ambient white noise, can
actually negate the silence in your office.
4) Strategically Arrange Work Spaces
In some cases, the problem may simply be caused by not arranging the work
spaces of individual employees strategically. If two of your workers tend to
tackle projects together, they should sit close in order to talk to each other
without making an effort or having to raise their voice. Clustering work spaces
to encourage teamwork is another common and successful approach.
5) Hire the Right Workers
A team of introverts will not interact much, while a team of extroverts will
probably drag down productivity through the opposite extreme. The key is to
find a balance, hiring workers that can manage both personality types.
Improving office silence through the hiring process will take time, and may
not ever be complete. But at the same time, is also the most sustainable
long-term solution to silent office syndrome because it forms your workforce
out of employees who are not afraid to talk, and who encourage others to
do the same as well.
Naturally, you don’t want your office to become a public square, too loud
and distracting for anyone to get work done. But you also don’t want to go into
the other extreme, encouraging silence to the point where it threatens morale
and productivity. The above 5 tips can help you find a good balance, allowing
your workers to maximize their productivity through conversations and making
noise without allowing it to become a distraction.
