Finding productivity in freedom from distraction: the link between room acoustics and better working conditions.
Researchers at the University of Sydney have found a close link between high levels of concentration at work and a distraction-free working environment. Whether working from home or in an office, finding a way to reduce background noise can be difficult: Sounds and their echoes within work spaces can sometimes be hard to dampen and harder to work productively over. New ISO regulations helpfully specify the standard for measuring a room’s acoustics and the quality of a speaker’s privacy in open space offices. We offer a number of options for creating a more productive sound environment without distancing yourself or your employees.
Firstly, it is important to consider what you and your employees need from your environment. For those frequently working face to face or over the phone, the quality of a speaker’s intelligibility and privacy contribute to acoustic comfort for both speaker and listener. For those in need of quiet spaces or to dampen background noise, the distance of distraction and the diffuse sound field are all elements that interfere with workflows or pose significant noise disruption.
Different aspects should be assessed when analysing the acoustics of an open-plan office, such as the distance between the workstations and the distribution of absorbent materials around the stations. Acoustic requirements can vary in this type of environment: for example, certain offices require good intelligibility to encourage communication among employees, so there should be fewer and lower screens in this case. However, this will reduce the speaker’s privacy, which can mean more distractions. Therefore in environments where concentration is critical, greater attention should be paid to the layout of surrounding acoustic treatment and to the sizes of your chosen acoustic screens.
Our range of PET desk dividers allow you to quickly and easily create different environments in a single room, whilst providing excellent sound absorption by making the most of our screens' large surface areas.
Additionally our range of sound-absorbing Rafts and Panels can easily and cost-effectively be fixed to the walls or ceilings of your office space. These panels not only minimise acoustic disturbances from speech, reverberation and background noise but also double as elegant additions to design-led spaces.