Did you know that workplace interruptions and distractions can derail productivity? Research into distractions and productivity dating back decades confirms that interruptions not only reduce productivity, but also impact the quality of work output.

Reduced productivity

Workers in open plan offices are interrupted by colleagues conversations, intrusive noise, notifications, and other distractions. Research shows that with each distraction or interruption, it takes the average worker around 23 minutes to get back on task. This can cost businesses thousands of dollars in productivity every week. Indeed a recent study found that the average Australian worker loses 600 hours per annum to distractions. If you’re paying an average wage earner, that’s $18,600 down the drain each year!

Another study showed that while workers who were constantly interrupted can work around the interruptions by changing their work patterns to complete the work faster, they experience more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and effort. In other words, this comes at a price that could be reflected in employee burnout or increased sick days.

Impact on work quality

But that’s not all. The impact of a distraction on the worker’s work quality can be significant. The human brain cannot multitask. Instead, it quickly switches between tasks, or from distraction back to task—known as “task switching”. A 2019 study found that:

the behavioral costs of task switching are typically unavoidable: individuals almost always take longer to complete a task and do so with more errors when switching between tasks than when they stay with one task. Neuroimaging work from our lab and others has helped to highlight the effects of task switching in the brain.

This kind of impact is especially problematic for settings where accuracy is critical, like in lawyers offices or financial institutions.

Solutions to distraction

Making use of quiet rooms or offices can help with distractions, as can turning off notifications. But for those who must work in open plan offices or other distracting environments, the presence of others is unavoidable.

Fortunately, many studies, including this 2023 study, demonstrate that sound masking can reduce distracting noise, improve concentration, enhance speech privacy, and provide a positive impact on productivity. Soundmask’s systems ameliorate the negative impacts of needless distractions and help protect workers from noise stress.