The cost companies must manage from their employees’ lack of concentration

Ambient noise is argued as the foremost challenge to employee wellbeing, highlighting an impact on both cognitive aspects, such as perception, but also on job investment with a direct effect on work ethics. Such risks, which can escalate to health conditions for employees and poor performance for businesses, can be counteracted by surprisingly cost-efficient investments in soundscape adjustments.

Open-Plan Offices and the Distraction Problem

Open space layouts represent the choice of 54% of employers across the UK. The top argument in favour of such office settings revolves around the goal of either constructing or consolidating an inclusive, participative organisational culture, through layouts presumed to encourage team bonding. However, eliminating physical barriers between colleagues inevitably lets distractions in, and exposure to a soundscape that affects focus is confirmed to have a direct impact on motivation and productivity.

How Noise Affects Focus and Performance

Ambient noise is demonstrated as a critical disruption to employees' performance, as reconnecting to concentration demands 24 minutes, or 5% of their working hours. An experiment published by the British Journal of Psychology signals how accuracy can fall by up to 67% in the exact same task when performed in a noise-free environment and then replicated in the usual buzz found in an office. Performing under background noise is identified as a challenge since school years, as confirmed by exhaustive research on learning.

How Loud Is Too Loud? Office Noise Levels Explained

The usual office jam sits around 60 to 65 decibels, whereas highway noise is measured at 85 decibels and a humming refrigerator at 40. The German Association of Engineers has set standard recommendations for the noise level that can ensure a sustainable soundscape, indicating 70 decibels as acceptable for transactional office work, whereas intellectual tasks require a maximum of 55 decibels for optimal performance.

The Health Impact of Constant Noise Exposure

Sound represents a disruption as it generates a boost of alert senses. Health effects generated by systematic exposure to noise include hearing loss, ringing ears, sleep disorders, and hypertension, which is even connected to cardiovascular diseases.

Why Overhearing Conversations Is So Disruptive

When asked to reflect on issues hindering their performance, respondents participating in research conducted by the University of Berkeley mentioned noise interference (40%), as well as distractions from overhearing colleagues' phone calls (64%) or private conversations (76%). We are cognitively endowed with a 1.6 bandwidth for human conversations, with limited capacity to detach from such disruptions. Being exposed to someone else's conversation reduces to 0.6 the attention span we can channel towards our own inner voice.

This volume is attributed to a linear deployment of sound, where any increase in tone or volume causes higher disruption. Sound interference can also make the phenomenon more exhausting through fragmentary comprehension and processing of speech. The Lombard effect highlights how ambient noise leads people to amplify their own sound by speaking louder to be understood in an environment where communication becomes hindered. Sounds or words that get processed cause more effort and higher distraction than broadband noise that carries no informational content.

The Business Cost of an Exhausting Soundscape

Expectations affirmed by UK employers revolve around high performance (99%), creativity and innovation (98%), and relaxation (96%). For an employer, an exhausting soundscape brings hidden additional costs, as over the long term it may lead to absenteeism and even affect employee retention.

Reducing Noise: What Actually Works

Readjusting office layouts to neutralise noise levels is recommended as a priority, since even a minor improvement toward an optimal work climate can translate into higher employee engagement. Studies conducted by British Gypsum (2015) indicate how a 50% reduction in ambient noise can help decrease stress levels by almost 30%.

Soundscape can be managed through permanent or stabilised architectural adjustments involving sound absorption or blocking interventions applied to walls and ceilings. 

Strategies to cover ambient noise with low-level background sound may not necessarily prove effective.

However, even where permitted under various building-specific criteria, architectural adjustments remain a highly demanding, long-term (if not permanent) intervention, which may be either unfeasible or a slow investment to recover.

Acoustic Screens: A Flexible, Cost-Effective Solution

Engineered for sound-absorbing properties, floor and desktop screens offer a flexible, cost-effective solution to create the optimal soundscape for your team's performance. Whether freestanding or mountable, acoustic screens are easy to install, ensuring space partitioning configurations that can always be updated to suit your team's needs.

At an individual level, desk screens and acoustic desk screens help cut down on the overheard conversations and phone calls shown above to be a major source of distraction. For a more permanent fix, sound insulation panels for walls and acoustic rafts tackle noise at the ceiling and wall level.

Not sure which setup fits your space best? Get in touch with our team and we'll help you find the right acoustic solution for your office.