A subjective investigation on the impact of irrelevant speech noise on health, well-being and productivity in open-plan offices

The popularity of open-plan offices in recent years has led to increased research on their acoustic comfort. Noise may be defined as one of the most disturbing factors in terms of health, well-being and performance of employees in the working environment. In particular, irrelevant speech noise tends to be mentioned as the most distracting noise source in open-plan offices. The present study concerns a subjective online survey that has involved several companies, two research centers and one university in Italy. The objective was threefold: 1) to investigate workers’ perceived impact of irrelevant speech noise related to their health, productivity and atmosphere between colleagues, 2) to determinate whether open-plan offices are acoustically treated, and 3) to evaluate the attitude of workers towards the use of an active light-system to control their voice volume. The results based on about 500 questionnaires confirm that irrelevant speech noise is perceived as annoying in open-plan offices. Workers declare a decrease of productivity and loss of concentration is the main feeling due to irrelevant speech noise. The noise disturbance perceived is related to room acoustic design. The results also emphasize that workers would pay attention to a light-system for personal voice control.