Due to the coronavirus pandemic, offices emptied out suddenly, but this is coming to an end and more and more employees are returning to the office. Many will have to get used to the "new" noise level again.
Benjamin Müller, psychoacoustician at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, points to studies in which 46% of employees are dissatisfied with their working environment.
Many point to acoustics, which overshadows criteria such as temperature and air quality. Noise is usually the most common factor causing work to be interrupted. Up to 50 times a day, 52% of employees interrupt their work because of noise. Conversations in the vicinity of one's own workplace are particularly distracting. "Even a low noise level of 35 dbA means that you can no longer concentrate," says Müller.
The psychoacoustician knows that background conversations reduce performance by 10% to 30%, which leads to more frequent mistakes.
The structure and layout of modern office buildings play a major role in this. They are mainly designed with architecture, appearance, and space efficiency in mind, with little consideration given to noise reduction. In addition, the positive effect of typical background noise from electronic devices is lost due to new technology. For this reason, room acoustic measurements should focus more on linguistic factors. This means paying attention to the distance to workstations so that conversations can still be understood, and to the number of employees who may be disturbed by such conversations.
The Fraunhofer Institute has developed free tools for calculating the reverberation time or creating a simulation of how it would sound in an office. Another tool determines the acoustic quality by calculating the ratio between disturbing noises and the background noise of electronic devices.
To improve acoustic quality, Müller suggests using screen walls and sound-absorbing ceiling panels. Another option would be technical solutions such as harmonic masking. This involves playing music through loudspeakers to drown out unwanted noise. This can increase performance by up to 7%.
However, there is one factor in all of this that is unpredictable: people. If a colleague speaks very loudly, even the best headphones won't help. The only solution here is to have guidelines that employees should follow.
