Despite sweeping changes in technology and four decades of advancing tastes, the majority of today's offices still hold firm to the original concept of open-plan. For the 10 million Britons who work in an office and spend 90 per cent of their time indoors, it is an environment that has become associated with long hours, stress and discomfort.
Open-plan may be a modern office design classic, encouraging more effective and open communication, but it has also had the adverse effect of exposing workers to higher levels of noise. Each can hear what all their neighbours are doing and, as office space is at a premium, there are more and more of these neighbours.
Add to this the standard host of essential office tools such as computers, printers, photocopiers, scanners and laptops and everything is in place for a highly stressed, noisy working environment. Tension headaches, frustration, loss of concentration and absenteeism are all potential risks.
Researchers, employers, trade unions and employees have been concerned about noise in the workplace for many years. However, the focus has tended to be on workplaces typically associated with noise — construction sites, factories and production plants.
Only more recently has there been increasing interest in the effects of office noise, so called 'background noise'.
Noise is usually defined as undesirable sound. There is no particular property that characterises the actual sound, rather it is the listener's perception of the sound that determines whether it is considered to be noise. Sources of noise, therefore, do not only include busy motorways and heavy machinery but also other people's conversations and the tapping of keyboards.
There are four broad categories of noise in the office: people's activities, office machines, the building's installations and noise outside the building.
When looking at people's activities, telephone conversations, particularly over mobile phones or loudspeaker phones, are considered by office employees to cause most distraction. Other noises related to people, such as footsteps and slamming doors, are also viewed as distracting.
Office machines, although becoming increasingly quiet, continue to be a major source of workplace noise. This is largely due to the dramatic increase in their numbers over a relatively short time.
Inside the building any number of installations generate disruptive noise, including ventilation, heating and air conditioning systems, plumbing installations and lifts. Outside the building, sounds such as passers-by, cars, trains, aeroplanes, factories and building sites are sources of undesirable noise.
Many theories have been put forward as to how noise affects performance. These have generally been based on how sound is received and processed by the central nervous system and have focused on seven common characteristics: distraction, activation level, tunnel vision, strategy, masking, after-effects and ambition levels.
Distraction is most likely to occur as a reaction to a new or unfamiliar sound. The result is not focusing on the task at hand. Distraction is closely linked to activation level — the point at which the sound becomes distracting. This limit varies from one person to another and can be affected by type of job and working situation.
According to the tunnel theory of hearing, noise has the potential to cut us off from some available information. This means we may fail to select the best way to perform a task. This, in turn, is linked to strategy. Quite simply, noise affects the strategy we use to solve a problem. When affected by noise, we choose our favourite strategy instead of looking for alternatives or better or quicker methods.
By constantly having to listen and concentrate harder, to compensate for a noisy environment, we become tired, listless and bad-tempered. This reduces performance and co-operation levels with others. As a result, ambition levels decline as tasks are performed at a level below their best.
Source
The Facilities Business
Postscript
Helen Tran is concept development manager at acoustic solutions consultants Ecophon, which manufactures acoustic ceiling systems.
Tel: 01256 850 977