A Cross-Sectional Survey on the Impact of Irrelevant Speech Noise on Annoyance, Mental Health and Well-being, Performance and Occupants’ Behavior in Shared and Open-Plan Offices

Abstract

This cross-sectional survey has compared subjective outcomes obtained from workers in shared (2–5 occupants) and open-plan (+5 occupants) offices, related to irrelevant speech, which is the noise that is generated from conversations between colleagues, telephone calls and laughter. Answers from 1078 subjects (55% in shared offices and 45% in open-plan offices) have shown that irrelevant speech increases noise annoyance, decreases work performance, and increases symptoms related to mental health and well-being more in open-plan than in shared offices. Workers often use headphones with music to contrast irrelevant speech in open-plan offices, while they take a break, change their working space, close the door or work from home in shared offices. Being female, when there are more than 20 occupants, and working in southern cities without acoustic treatments in the office, make it more likely for the occupants to be annoyed by irrelevant speech noise in open-plan offices. While, working in southern cities and with acoustic treatments in the office makes it more likely that noise annoyance will be reported in shared offices. Finally, more than 70% of the interviewed in open-plan offices were willing to reduce their voice volumes when advised by a noise monitoring system with a lighting feedback.

Influence of Classroom Acoustics on Noise Disturbance and Well-Being for First Graders

“…This work is thus a pilot study to investigate to which extent classroom acoustics affects the perceived well-being and noise disturbance in children. Noise disturbance has been used in this study, instead of noise annoyance, as noise annoyance is a multifaceted concept that could be more complicated for children as it includes, beside noise disturbance, interferences with some activities, nuisance, unpleasantness, and other factors (Guski et al, 1999;Di Blasio et al, 2019).…”

Promoting Healthy and Supportive Acoustic Environments: Going beyond the Quietness

“…Taghipour et al [19] look at how different building facades are likely to affect the perceived acoustic quality of inner yards of residential complexes. Di Blasio and colleagues [20] focus on the overall comfort and performance of open-plan office workers when affected by undue noise coming from irrelevant speech. Similarly, looking at cognitive performance, Shu and Ma [21] carry out a study to explore the restorative effects of different soundscapes on children's sustained attention and short-term memory.…”

Sustainable Workplace: The Moderating Role of Office Design on the Relationship between Psychological Empowerment and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour in Uzbekistan

“…In this regard, key issues identified by researchers include distraction, noise and consequent difficulties in concentration [114]; increased cognitive workload [115]; decreased job performance; and increased sickness absence [9]. Furthermore, a recent study by Di Blasio et al [116] demonstrates that noise from conversation, equipment and other sources annoys employees, decreasing work productivity, exacerbating mental health problems and negatively impacting well-being. However, the experiment conducted at a public university in Denmark by Brem [117] indicates that the open-plan office design is not the main cause of all negative work outcomes in an organization.…”