Abstract
Noisiness in the working environment was largely proved to have effects on the working activity and performance. To limit the spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first wave between March and May 2020, Italian workers had massively started performing remote working. Insights on the subjective perception of noise annoyance under the remote working settings were thus necessary. Workers from a university and from several large and small Italian companies, resulting in 1,934 participants overall, answered to a questionnaire on the perception of noise annoyance in the remote working environment. A total of 57% of the responding workers stated to be sensitive to noise. The questionnaire was delivered online; data were recorded anonymously and then aggregated for statistical analyses. Results show that 55% of the workers perform their activity in an isolated room of the home environment, 43% in a shared room (e.g., kitchen, living room), and 2% in an outdoor space, with the majority of workers (57%) performing activity without other people in the environment. Among the noise sources investigated, 25% of workers recognize the noise generated by people (e.g., talking, moving, calling, listening to music) as the main source of disturbance. The negative consequences of noise annoyance during the remote working hours are mainly related to a loss of concentration and to a difficulty in relaxing. Furthermore, workers reported to get easily irritated by noise generated from the neighborhoods or from the housemates as it tends to distract from finishing a task.
Highlights
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Italian workers have been pushed to perform remote working to limit the increasing number of infections from the virus, especially within the first wave in MarchMay 2020, with a progressively growing portion of population working from home
According to a recent report from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT-Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, 2020), remote working was engaged by 8% of microenterprises, 19% of smallsize enterprises (i.e., 10–49 workers), 50% of medium-size enterprises (i.e., 50–249 workers), 77% of large-size enterprises
Noise Annoyance in Remote Working investigation approach based on indoor soundscape (Torresin et al, 2020a) revealed a number of positive effects on remote working and people’s well-being
Summary
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Italian workers have been pushed to perform remote working to limit the increasing number of infections from the virus, especially within the first wave in MarchMay 2020, with a progressively growing portion of population working from home. According to a recent report from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT-Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, 2020), remote working was engaged by 8% of microenterprises (i.e., with 3-9 workers), 19% of smallsize enterprises (i.e., 10–49 workers), 50% of medium-size enterprises (i.e., 50–249 workers), 77% of large-size enterprises (i.e., more than 250 workers) Such a change in the working organization has brought a great number of people to live and work in the same location, that is, at home. Working from home involves different job routines alternated to family needs: frequent changes in the working process, and various cognitive tasks in turn, were proved to lead to additional negative effects such as a sense of frustration and feeling guilt (Spagnoli et al, 2020) In this framework, the features of a built environment may play a critical role in health.
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