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.

Sonja Di Blasio,Louena Shtrepi,Giuseppina Puglisi,Arianna Astolfi

doi:10.3390/ijerph16020280

Sonja Di Blasio, Louena Shtrepi + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16020280

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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.

Highlights

Irrelevant speech noise (ISN) is the noise that is generated from conversations between colleagues, telephone calls and laughter [1,2]
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
The multiple responses of subjects cannot be excluded. This cross-sectional study has compared the subjective outcomes of shared offices (2–5 workers) and open-plan offices (+5 workers) related to “irrelevant speech noise”, which is the noise generated from conversations between colleagues, telephone calls and laughter

Summary

Introduction

Irrelevant speech noise (ISN) is the noise that is generated from conversations between colleagues, telephone calls and laughter [1,2]. Noise annoyance has been defined as a multi-faceted concept that includes behavioral noise effects, such as disturbance, and interferes with intended activities and evaluative aspects, such as nuisance, unpleasantness and getting on one’s nerves [10]. A self-estimated loss of performance, due to ISN, was found in open-plan offices [1,5]. This outcome was confirmed from the results of laboratory studies where subjective perception was considered and tests over several cognitive tasks were performed [8,11,12,13].

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