As corporations realize greater productivity savings by providing headsets to their employees, it is vital to choose products that achieve greater efficiency and ergonomic benefits to both telephone-dependant and telephone-intensive workers as well as meet or exceed the benchmarks for safety as defined by government and private organizations. Guaranteeing that all headsets in use are compliant with these standards insure an organization is not liable for any headset related injury arising from technological or environmental situations out of your control.
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), Part 1910, Subpart S, governs the safe limits of noise exposure employees can be subjected to within their work environment. These regulations have a direct impact on telephone headset products because the telephone headset is worn by the user and is directly coupled to the human ear.
In call centers or telephone-intensive job functions, most employees are on the telephone for up to eight hours per day. OSHA believes that a person can be safely exposed to a continuous noise level (like dial tone) of 85dBA for eight hours without adverse affects. Since speech is not continuous, an average voice signal of up to 94dB will comply with OSHA exposure limits.
To achieve a safe level of protection, compression circuits have to be incorporated within the receive path of the telephone system or the headset. This is usually achieved with the compression circuits contained within the headset amplifier. Very few telephone manufacturers build in this high-level compression circuitry into their systems, since the exposure to noise levels is usually less in terms of time and duration with the use of a handset.
The major manufacturers of telephone headsets insist on employing this stringent level of compression in order to meet the requirements of OSHA. Many times, offshore importers and manufacturers opt to use a less expensive form of protection that only guards against excessively loud audio spikes. Known as maximum acoustical limiters, these less effective circuits will attack any noise louder than 118dBA, but do nothing to protect against exposure to voice louder than 94dBA. Under these conditions, users subjected to long term excessive acoustic noise exposure could suffer a hearing loss.
The risk of long-term damage to the agent's hearing, worker's compensation claims, lawsuits, or OSHA fines being levied for non-compliance far outweigh the savings of procuring lower cost products.
Additionally, since all telephone headsets conduct electrical circuits, via the use of power from the telephone set or from the batteries of the headset amplifier, Underwriter's Laboratories (UL) certification and compliance should also be recognized. Special anti-static and anti-shock circuitry should be integrated into the headset microphone and amplifier to protect against harmful electro-static discharge (ESD) that may occur in very dry or electro statically charged office environments that consist of non-treated carpeting or fabric-covered acoustical panels. UL maintains a listing of headset manufacturers and their products that meet or exceed their certification standards. Any UL listed products will be marked with the certification on the product or product packaging. Again, the risk of worker's compensation claims or lawsuits resulting from an ESD incident can be costly in to corporations providing headsets to their employees.
The headset manufacturer of the products in your organization should be able to provide documentation from both OSHA and UL stating their product certification standards. Additionally, both the manufacturer and distributor of the products you purchase should carry adequate liability insurance to cover any damages resulting from the use of their products under normal circumstances.
The headset manufacturer should also have acoustical and electrical engineers on staff who are responsible for obtaining and maintaining these certifications for both OSHA and UL. The major headset manufacturers recognize this responsibility to their customers and have sophisticated Research and Development engineers on staff working to integrating the latest technological advancements into both present and future product lines.
With the philosophy of filing frivolous lawsuits, you need to be sure that the products you use in your office or call center meet the government standards that are meant to protect you and your employees.
