A new study suggests that too much – or too little – office noise has a negative effect on employee well-being. The sweet spot? About 50 decibels, comparable to moderate rain or birdsong.
Choosing to work in the murmur of a busy coffee shop rather than in an office with library-level silence might be healthier, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Arizona and University of Kansas.
The study finds – perhaps unsurprisingly – that loud noises at the office have a negative impact on employee well-being. But the study also suggests that complete silence is not conducive to a healthy workplace.
[...] "Everybody knows that loud noise is stressful, and, in fact, extremely loud noise is harmful to your ear," said study co-author Esther Sternberg, director of the UArizona Institute on Place, Wellbeing & Performance. "But what was new about this is that with even low levels of sound – less than 50 decibels – the stress response is higher."
[...] Humans' tendency to get distracted, Sternberg said, is a result of the brain's stress response to potential threats. Our brains are "difference detectors" that take note of sudden changes in sounds so we can decide to fight or flee, she said.
That may explain why low, steady sounds help mask distractions in the workplace, she added.
"People are always working in coffee shops – those are not quiet spaces. But the reason you can concentrate there is because the sounds all merge to become background noise," Sternberg said. "It masks sound that might be distracting. If you hear a pin drop when it's very, very quiet, it will distract you from what you're doing."
Journal Reference:
Karthik Srinivasan, Faiz Currim, Casey M. Lindberg, et al., Discovery of associative patterns between workplace sound level and physiological wellbeing using wearable devices and empirical Bayes modeling [open], npj Digital Medicine (2023) 6:5 ; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-022-00727-1
(Score: 5, Informative) by guest reader on Monday March 13, @07:14PM (3 children)
Office spaces are not just about noise. EU Open Plan Offices - The new ways of working [europa.eu] lists the following key findings: phone calls, people walking by, centrally managed temperature, or the idea of being watched all the time:
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13, @07:56PM (2 children)
A customer built a new office building. They had these glass offices around the big open spaces. And for the first year atleast, they didn't have anything preventing people walking by from looking into the glass wall office. I noticed that everytime i walked past these terrariums, i naturally looked in, and the people in got distracted. So after a year they put a coating on the glass.
Personally i see open spaces an idiotic move. It is somewhat useful for a team doing the same thing, so they can converse with each other as need be, if that is the nature of the game, but otherwise it is just plain stupid.
But now, 3/4 the people aren't in the office anymore anyway. It's just wasted space. That's the silver lining.
Slava Ukraini! Not an inch is given without a fight!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday March 14, @03:45PM (1 child)
Yeah, it makes sense for a team that collaborates heavily to work in a shared space... but anyone NOT in that team is just a distraction with no redeeming qualities.
Even team members are probably not actively collaborating most of the time, and anyone not actively collaborating is just suffering from constant distractions by the others.
I could see an argument for something like a small conference room for each team with lots of shoe-box personal work alcoves that open off it with sound-proof doors. Like, you've got your private workspace with a door you can close to eliminate distractions when you need to concentrate, but you can also just open the door to join the team space. It's tiny, but if you're concentrating your your head is in the project rather than your physical space, so who cares?
Or, for less of an architectural and reorganization nightmare - "portable" alcoves like large phone booths that you can install as desired within any larger room. Like cubicles that don't suck in a room shared with only your fellow team members.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14, @09:10PM
Yes, as i said
. I'd say it's pretty rare that the whole team needs to interact with each other the whole time. That's why i don't think an open space is a good idea.
Those booths exist. There's a company (probably more than one, but the one i know is atleast locally the biggest fish) here that makes them and they are in pretty much all offices nowdays.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Monday March 13, @07:50PM (4 children)
There are people who thrive on loud noise. I needed earplugs in an open plan office.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13, @08:05PM (2 children)
I've always been sound-sensitive, and more recently found out I'm sound-oriented and ended up being pretty good with running sound mix (PA system, bands, etc.)
Any sound is very distracting for me. If it's good sound / music, I want to listen. If it's bad, shut it up.
Oddly, very occasionally I'm able to be productive even with music playing, but never when the work requires much thinking, reading, designing, focus, etc.
Very bizarre, to me, especially when I was at uni, was seeing people studying productively in a very noisy place, like sitting on the floor reading and writing in the halls of a very very busy classroom building. I had a friend in college who would turn on both TV and stereo and sit on the floor studying. He said it was the only way he could study. I'm surmising the sound kept occupied and busy some certain parts of his brain that would otherwise generate internal neural interference. It would be a very interesting FMRI study.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday March 14, @04:01PM (1 child)
I'm sound-sensitive as well, and use music when working mostly to drown out other distractions. But I've found a few kinds of music that are good for thinking to:
- animal song: whale, bird, etc. I find birdsong in particular is actually quite soothing, which makes sense - we evolved in a world where birds sing pretty much continuously unless there's a substantial threat nearby. We were probably wired to interpret birdsong as "everything is still fine" long before we became sapient, and it seems to free up some more attention for whatever I'm focusing on.
- not-really-great music without any meaningful words to distract the symbolic parts of my brain - this can be orchestral music, or music in languages I don't understand at all (a little understanding is the worst, as a part of my brain insists on struggling for better comprehension)
- genres like House or Trance, or the procedural ADHD management music you can find online (YouTube, etc). Which overlap heavily with the previous section, but seem to be geared toward promoting specific types of head spaces - if you can find the ones that work well for you for different kinds of tasks, I find they can make it a lot easier to get and stay focused. Especially when I'm really not feeling it on my own. (like those "ugh, I just want to ____" times)
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday March 14, @06:19PM
Oh yeah. Especially Goa trance. Music's always been essential for me while working to maintain some degree of sanity.
Nice idea. Birdsong can be really impressive as well. Humans clearly didn't invent music; birds have millions of years of prior art.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by inertnet on Monday March 13, @11:13PM
I'm lucky enough to work in quiet places, because I'm very easily distracted even by soft sounds, coming from other rooms. Lights as well, I can't stand a blinking led anywhere in my field of view. I have covered my printer's display with a foldible piece of carton, just because it likes to wake up on its own regularly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 13, @08:03PM (9 children)
If you like your own music, having it a bit above background to drown out distractions is good.
If you dislike your neighbor's music (or your neighbor), even a little, hearing it even below background is distracting in the extreme.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13, @08:22PM (6 children)
"50 dB"? “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” (-Inigo Montoya ("The Princess Bride"))
50 dB is pretty quiet. 55-62 is pretty normal for a person speaking through a PA system. (yes, I have calibrated SPL meters, run live sound, and check things like that often.)
It turns out we're all wired differently. Good music is actually distracting to me- I want to pay attention to it. Bad music is equally distracting- I want to shut it off. I always have earplugs on me, often in my ears.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 13, @09:28PM (2 children)
My point, more directly, is that if you like Metallica, you're unlikely to be satisfied with it playing at 50 dB.
However, if you don't like Metallica but your cube-neighbor is playing it, even hearing it at 50 dB in your cube (presumably from their headphones) is also unacceptable.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Monday March 13, @11:00PM (1 child)
Then you have bigger problems.
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14, @07:07AM
Yes, a life.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday March 14, @04:11PM (2 children)
I think you need to recalibrate your interpretation of "quiet"
I've never heard a person speak through a PA system at any volume other than "loud" - the entire point of a PA system is to cut through all conversation and ambient noises so that people can hear the message. Back before electronics that was done by someone yelling to reach a similar volume.
Normal human conversation tends to reach around 60dB - but that's one person talking, and most of that time they're not actually anywhere near that volume (gaps between words, quieter un-stressed parts of words, etc). Put a bunch of simultaneous conversations in the same space and the volume increases dramatically.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15, @06:21AM (1 child)
Psychology is fascinating. I didn't clarify the scenario, so as you read you thought of, well, what you described. My frame of reference was a fairly quiet office or any other situation with very little din. I regularly run sound at a church, and when someone is speaking (praying, preaching, announcements, etc.) 55-62 is pretty normal. Some people / churches / teaching lectures make it louder, for sure, but to me it seems like shouting if it's hitting 70 dB.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday March 15, @06:42PM
I guess I've never really thought of the sound system at a church, etc. as a PA system - it's just a sound system. A PA system instead paints a picture of a distributed speaker system for addressing lots of people who really aren't there aren't there for anything related to the sound system. Probably with plenty of static and distortion. Stores, airports, hospitals, schools, etc.
And I don't think I've ever actually heard one used in a business, library, or anywhere else reasonably quiet.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Opportunist on Monday March 13, @08:53PM (1 child)
Then again, country is unacceptable at any dB above 0.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14, @07:09AM
Even though theoretically impossible, like approaching 0 K when all vibration among atoms ceases, the trace of Country music echoing in the wavefunction is too loud.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday March 14, @09:56AM
In my home office, I can set the noise level to exactly the level I enjoy the most without bothering or pestering anyone else working with me.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday March 14, @04:18PM
I suspect the kind of noise matters a great deal as well. I tend to find music distracting, but without it I find the noises around me distracting instead.
So what I'd usually do was have nature sounds playing - rain, waves, wind, etc. Not distracting itself, and it drowns out other distracting noises.
Then I discovered birdsong... which not only drowns out other distractions, but also seems to promote a sense of well-being. Presumably because in the wilds we evolved to survive in, birdsong means there's nothing particularly dangerous nearby.
So now I have birdsong playing most of the time, possibly with nature sounds playing simultaneously as a backdrop.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 17, @06:50AM
I have found that the sound of a re-re-re-re-rerun on television can mask distraction, but even much quieter conversation or activity from actually physically present people is terribly distracting. I theorize it's because I know there is zero chance that the people on TV are going to attempt to interact with me and since they're not even real people, they don't actually matter.
The coffee shop is kind of in-between. They're real people but they're unlikely to interact with strangers sitting and working. Nothing they are saying to each other has much chance of being relevant to me.