A Sponsored Article by Sennheiser
To facilitate more seamless workplace collaboration, many organizations have adopted expansive, unencumbered workspaces, deployed with unified communications (UC) systems. Such a footprint is designed to foster collaboration. Yet it often comes at the cost of the privacy, concentration and efficiency of workers.
Such spaces engender distraction and an unprecedented amount of background—a proven deterrent to productivity. More organizations are replacing traditional telephony hardware with headsets that incorporate sophisticated audio as well as noise reduction technologies to combat these drawbacks.
Effective audio solutions enhance modern office environments, maximizing the intended benefits of the collaborative workspace. Below are some of the most widely demanded attributes that our business customers request, offering an intriguing glimpse into how savvy companies can address evolving workplace challenges through audio technology.
Premium Sound Quality
Call clarity is highly in-demand. In recent years, sophisticated engineering from the recording and the hearing aid industries has migrated into corporate R&D departments, delivering outstanding performance in office headsets. This has yielded noise cancellation technologies that ensure as natural as possible a communication experience, with minimal disruption, even in challenging acoustic environments; e.g., high-end units incorporate advanced, multiple microphone systems that continually focus on the user’s voice, producing consistently clear speech quality while minimizing background noise.
Comfort and Wearability
A headset should be comfortable all day long to lessen physical strain on employees, so businesses can maximize productivity and improve job satisfaction. User discomfort can negatively impact both performance and communication quality, in addition to the user’s health and well-being. Headsets should be constructed with premium materials that are comfortable on the ears, and offer different wearing styles to meet individual preferences. Premium models even consider the user’s safety, incorporating technologies that protect against acoustic shock and sudden sound bursts.
Wireless Agility
Modern workstyles lean toward collaboration and teamwork, which is the original motivation for the open-office floorplan. Such trends need to be supported with the right audio solutions, enabling flexibility, mobility, and quality audibility, and empowering people to work from anywhere, at any time. Headsets should deliver agility for desk-bound workers through emerging trends such as “hot desking” (workers who share tasks and rotate desks), or enabling “huddle spaces” and ad-hoc conference areas.
Active Noise Cancellation
Knowledge workers who contend with distractions in loud, open-office environments frequently opt for active noise cancellation, which helps to increase concentration by minimizing background sounds. Sennheiser’s latest professional headset addresses this dilemma with adaptive ANC, which automatically monitors the environment and dynamically adjusts the degree of noise reduction as-needed, within the device, throughout the worker’s day.
Reliability
Businesses want their technologies investments to endure through a significant timeframe without costly repairs, replacement or notable downtime. In addition to product durability, businesses also evaluate reliability in terms of consistent audio clarity. Quality not only helps justify the investment of an advanced unified communication system, it also increases user adoption.
Value and ROI
Pricing is always a key element of a UC expenditure. However, more organizations are discovering that lower-quality audio does not yield the best ROI, neither does it adequately support their unified communications investment. The advantages of a durable, comfortable, and intelligently engineered headset eclipse the negligible savings of lower-shelf audio components. Providing the best business grade tool for the job promotes the adoption of UC technologies and maximizes the potential of UC platforms.
Businesses need to consider how audio solutions can effectively address these demands of the modern workplace, making audio a pertinent part of any organization’s purchasing decisions.