The next time you’re at work, close your eyes for 30 seconds and just listen. Everything you hear, from the murmur of your colleagues to the coffee grinder shrieking nearby, makes up the soundscape of your workplace.
Whether you are aware of it or not, this sound environment plays an influential role in your well-being and how you feel about the company you work for. In the past, little thought was given to how office design affected sound; however, new insights into how sound affects well-being and productivity are driving a trend in soundscape design in the workplace.
Sound affects our bodies and minds, ultimately influencing our productivity. Twittering birds, rippling water and other soothing sounds relieve stress and help us find our flow, whereas unwanted sounds, such as a loud coffee grinder, cause us to release stress hormones, which raises our heart rate and blood pressure.
Research suggests that unwanted speech noise is the most distracting sound in an office. When you can hear a colleague taking a phone call, for instance, the content of the call grabs the attention of your brain. Your productivity drops, and it may take up to 20 minutes to fully regain your concentration. The cumulative effect of this loss of concentration has important implications: in an extensive study carried out by Steelcase, a US office furniture manufacturer, workers reported losing up to 86 minutes a day in productivity due to noise distractions. Since employee earnings make up the lion’s share of business operating costs, even a one per cent improvement in productivity can have a significant impact on the bottom line of a business.
As a result, business owners are working with architects and designers to optimize the workplace soundscape. As private offices are increasingly replaced with open-plan offices, those architects and designers are faced with major acoustical challenges.
Acoustic zoning
One way that designers deal with such challenges is to modify the open-plan model. They designate different zones with varying levels of acoustic privacy, depending on how the space will be used. Designers need to strike a balance between the need for privacy and quiet areas and the desire for openness and communication with others.
Some zones should provide “spaces of tranquillity where the mind can relax without external distractions and interruptions,” reports the Leesman Index, a global working-environment survey based in the UK. For example, a sign above a row of desks in LinkedIn’s Munich office reads “focus zone”. Deeper into the workspace, free-standing glass pods offer quiet sanctuaries.
Not all zones need to be quiet, however. “A good buzz may be associated with a strong culture — people chatting, interacting and even bonding. It might give the sense of ‘one team’ all pulling in the same direction,” the Leesman Index report found. Dedicated spaces around the office should encourage interaction and discussion, for example in break-out areas, meeting rooms and lounges. In the London office of Splunk, a US-based data-analysis company, designers installed an antique Pullman railway carriage, which contributes to the office’s “cool factor” while providing a space for teamwork and collaboration.
The most important thing is that the workspace is flexible: individuals and teams should be able to move around freely, acoustically appropriating spaces depending on their work demands.
Effective acoustic design within these zones is not easy, though. Office designers have three main tasks: to keep background noise at a level that is not distracting; to protect speech privacy so that only the intended audience hears what is being said; and to improve speech intelligibility — making sure speech is clearly understood when it’s supposed to be, for example in conference rooms or collaborative zones.
To understand the obstacles that office designers face when shaping the sound environment within the acoustic zones, it’s useful to understand the basics of how sound behaves. Travelling away from a source, sound behaves rather like a table-tennis ball moving through the air. If the ball is thrown directly at a hard surface, it will bounce back with nearly the same amount of energy as it hit the surface. Like a table-tennis ball, sound will bounce off hard surfaces many times before its energy fades away. Imagine trying to concentrate in a room in which everyone is throwing table-tennis balls. That is how working in an office without acoustic treatment can feel.
Offices have many hard surfaces for sound to bounce off, such as walls, ceilings, floors, tables and desks. Using the so-called ABCs of sound mitigation — absorbing, blocking and covering — designers can treat sound at three different points: its source, its path and its recipient. When implementing the ABCs, office designers have the chance to combine acoustic treatment with creative brand expression.
Absorbent materials allow some of the sound to be captured by the material, reducing the total level of sound in a space. Carpets can pad the floor. Acoustic panels on the wall can create colourful patterns that also function as art installations. Green walls of plants can soak up sound while introducing fresh air. Islands of high-backed, upholstered furniture can create cosy areas for private conversations. Cloud-like baffles can seemingly levitate over meeting room tables, improving speech clarity by directing the sound back to the listeners.
Blocking prevents all or some of the sound reaching the recipient by blocking its path. Plantronics, an audio-technology company in California, has introduced Habitat Soundscaping, which features large glass dividers with water gently rippling down the sides, simultaneously blocking and covering sound. Covering, or masking, is the most counterintuitive of the treatment methods. At the right frequency and volume, additional sound can make a space seem quieter: the pleasant introduced sound, such as flowing water, cancels out unwanted sounds.
Here is how it works: if you were reading a book at the beach, and two people started speaking a couple of metres away, you could probably continue reading because the sound of the surf in the background would cancel out some of the speech sounds. However, if you were reading in a silent library, and two people sat down next to you and started to whisper, your concentration would immediately move to their conversation. In the same way, increasing the ambient noise level of a workspace can be effective in helping people to concentrate.
Forward-looking businesses are increasingly willing to invest in this “invisible architecture”. Julian Treasure is founder of UK-based The Sound Agency, which composes soundscapes of music and other sounds to represent companies’ brand identities. “It’s about designing, not appearance, but experience, so that we have spaces that sound as good as they look, that are fit for purpose and that improve our quality of life, our health and well-being, our social behaviour and our productivity,” Treasure said in a TED talk.
If you don’t expect a designer to set foot in your office any time soon, you can take the improvement of your soundscape into your own hands. This may help you get your work done, however, it may never feel quite like working next to the ocean.