Have you ever suspected a colleague of eavesdropping? Maybe that confidential meeting that you had with your boss has found its way around the office. Or perhaps you’ve heard private conversations that you’d rather not hear?

We’ve all been in offices where speech privacy is a problem. I remember working in an office where the stationery room backed onto a manager’s office. You could hear every word. In fact, if there was a particularly interesting meeting happening, half the secretarial staff would suddenly need to resupply their staplers.

As a sound masking business, speech privacy is something that we’re constantly asked to protect. The human interest side of things is often overlooked. I thought I’d share with you some (anonymous!) scenarios here where we’ve solved more problems than anticipated.

The eavesdropping secretary

Normally you’d expect your executive assistant to be discreet. In fact, I’d consider it a job requirement. However, sometimes they are not. We had a client who did not realise how indiscreet his EA was until the sound masking system had been in for a few weeks.

Suddenly, the senior manager realised that no one has been passing around his private conversations. He’d thought that the workers on his team had a habit of discussing the conversations among themselves. But when the Soundmask system was installed, he realised that the “leaks” had stopped. His EA had been repeating the conversations to the rest of the team. With the masking in, her source of gossip had evaporated. Fortunately for her, the chewing out from her boss wasn’t audible to the rest of the office!

The psychologist’s clients

Often psychologists share space, renting rooms within an office suite. The rooms might be unoccupied at various times, so without simultaneous sessions speech privacy is manageable. However, when all rooms are occupied, the problems arise.

This psychologist had a couple of clients within this “simultaneous session” window. The speech privacy was minor, but necessary to fix (for legal reasons). After much negotiation between the psychologists, they decided to install a Soundmask system.

Once the system had been installed, the psychologist suddenly noticed a change from the clients who had been impacted by the speech privacy problem. These clients suddenly opened up to the psychologist about personal issues they had not discussed before. They felt more comfortable discussion deeply personal issues when they were not afraid of being overheard.

Fixing speech privacy can solve the eavesdropping problem, but can also have unexpected positive outcomes. If you need help with your speech privacy problems, please reach out to see how we can help you.