Office acoustics: Why noise matters and how to get it right

I am highly concerned that modern office design places too much emphasis on technology. When it comes to acoustic privacy and comfort, we’re relying too much on:

• Noise-canceling headphones
• Meeting headsets with directional microphones
• Video-conferencing equipment with noise suppression software

This reliance on technology to solve our problems is not unique to office acoustics; it’s a common approach in our era.

Rather than assume that new tech will iron out unwanted office sounds, shouldn’t we be looking for innovative approaches to office acoustics? These can result in a more comfortable-sounding workplace, where employees can do the tasks they need to do and flock to the office.

Poor office acoustics is a leading cause of workplace stress. Noise negatively impacts our health. But in many places, various bodies and jurisdictions have codified acoustics in building standards. They have tried to simplify complex acoustic situations into easily definable single numbers and general metrics.

If your number is under, it’s good; if it’s over, that’s bad. Acoustic consultants provide advice to help verify that these metrics are met in new workplaces and office retrofits, often with happy results. But not always.

Let’s remember that studies show that acoustics matter in the workplace.

According to Leesman’s Focus Forward report, only 35 percent of employees are satisfied with noise levels at their workplace. Employees who were unhappy with the noise levels reported low-satisfaction levels with the movement of people around their workstation. They also had negative views of the quality of quiet rooms, dividers, and space between work settings.

Studies show that employees in noisy work environments lose up to 86 minutes per day due to interruptions caused by noise. There are risks from these numbers: low engagement, miscommunication, office avoidance, and lack of collaboration. Many post-COVID hybrid workplace surveys cite noise as one of the top reasons people avoid the office. Office acoustics can influence satisfaction scores, employee turnover, and space utilization.

Traditional design approaches focus on the four pillars of acoustic design to address these issues:

1. Block or shield the path of sound
2. Absorb unhelpful reflections and control reverberance
3. Control background noise
4. Mask unwanted sound

But given the persistence of acoustic issues, we are missing a critical piece of design. It’s time for a holistic approach to office acoustics.

Designing workplace environments to support business and employee well-being requires a new mindset where acoustics are integrated into the design at the outset.

We need a new approach to sound in the workplace

We can’t simply apply the traditional acoustic approach to office design as a bolt-on service to shoehorn acoustic advice into an already evolved design. Designing workplace environments to support business and employee well-being requires a new mindset. We need to integrate acoustics into the design at the outset, before irreversible design decisions are made.

I am excited by a recent design research project completed by my colleagues Reena Mahtani and Jameson Musyoki. They took a holistic approach to acoustics, using soundscaping, on a rugby club project renovation. The results are inspiring, and I am anxious to apply their process to office design projects.

Soundscaping to help us get it right

The hybrid work culture has raised expectations for what the workplace offers—and a disconnect between what companies are providing and what their employees want is apparent. This means that there is a real risk that the workplace does not support what the employees need. And this directly impacts the health and prosperity of the organization.

Soundscaping is the backbone of this holistic approach. It focuses on the quality of the experience rather than the cold, hard numbers of acoustic standards. Soundscaping uses the results of the engagement process to understand the unique needs of the organization’s employees so we can focus the acoustic budget on solving their issues.

Start with detailed user benchmarking and a design brief

This holistic approach to acoustics starts with getting the design brief right. It needs to express a clear vision of the desired outcome. Without it, there’s a risk of unmet expectations and missed opportunities for employees and organizational benefits. Benchmarking itself is not new, but it’s essential to the soundscape process.

In soundscaping, we use a pre-intervention questionnaire to tease out areas of concern or issues with a current situation. This allows us to focus on an acoustic response that we can integrate with other disciplines and target design to what really matters.

Consultation must run deeper than a simple suggestion box. Organizations need to know their employees’ needs, the tasks they need to perform, and the acoustic and environmental conditions to support those tasks. Here, we mix acoustic benchmarking questions with other engagement questions covering ethics, demographics, work activity, wellness, and more to tease out meaningful results. We ask users how they perceive the workplace at various times of day. We present benchmarking data graphically to make it easy to understand.

We can gain critical insights from this type of preoccupancy benchmarking. For instance, we can spend the budget in areas where intervention will make the biggest impact for employees rather than throwing money at generic compliance. We saw the value of detailed questioning and sound testing on a recent project for a music publisher.The organization’s internal documents asked for lower than usual background sound levels, “soundproof” rooms, and a high degree of privacy. But the term “soundproof” was misunderstood by users and there were competing ideas about privacy. We tested office acoustics to quantify existing conditions and compare them to the company’s needs. Testing showed that privacy was poor, and there was nothing close to soundproof settings. Low background levels contributed to poor privacy performance.

Benchmarking helped us clarify their issues. It enabled us to recommend higher background noise levels in certain spaces while improving privacy between nearby spaces. The redesign resulted in cost savings because it required less noise control for the HVAC system and allowed for lower-performing partitions, whilst improving the privacy rating. The design focused the budget on meeting the needs of different departments. 

Measure the acoustic performance before and after intervention

Understanding the sound of the space before and after allows for novel design approaches. In soundscaping, we use acoustic metrics that are not normally associated with workplace design. For example, early decay time (EDT) measurements, rather than the more general reverberation time (RT), help us to understand reflected sound at close quarters. RT measures the time it takes for a sound to decay by 60dB, while EDT measures the time taken for the sound to decay by 10dB after reflection. With these metrics, we can tailor outcomes that deliver better-sounding spaces within a budget.

An open-plan office we are working on gets noisy at certain times of day. The occupational noise makes it hard to get work done. If one is not wearing headphones, the harsh sound leads to a ringing in the ears—that’s feedback from sound bouncing off the ceiling.

We have tested the RT previously, and it only marginally exceeds the recommended RTs. With the rugby club research in mind, we decided to take EDT, which is often used for performance-space design and is associated with the way people perceive reverberance.

EDT metrics showed that the reflection path from the source to the hard ceiling and receiver is short in this office. The short path concentrates the early energy which can cause a high-intensity burst of noise, leading to discomfort. Using the traditional broad brush of RT, we may not have picked this up. We can also use the acoustic strength metric for the listener’s perception of loudness. We can increase EDT by placing absorption and diffusion materials on the ceiling or on surfaces close to the receiver/listener. This longer reflection time should lead to more perceived spaciousness and comfort.

Use “auralization” as part of a targeted design process

Alongside the soundscaping process, we can use advanced digital modeling tools. An auralization is like a visualization—but for the ears not the eyes. With our auralization tool, we can create aural renderings of what spaces can sound like before they are built.

This allows designers and users to hear the acoustic quality of a design. It can be a powerful tool for testing an option with budget and sustainability options in mind before committing it. This gives the design team high confidence that the space will achieve the acoustic aims, with no misaligned expectations.

This auralization tool helps us explore options for sound-insulating construction and how they affect factors such as room-to-room speech privacy. We can use it to test combinations of background noise and sound-insulating performance of building elements.

It helps with privacy between adjacent spaces. For example, on one conference room project, some background noise will mask the sound from an adjacent private space like a boardroom. While higher background noise is preferred in a circulation area to mask sound from a private conference room. To test a conference room or boardroom design, we can vary the level of noise coming through the wall and ductwork and its source: from a human voice to artificial background noise. And we can explore the sonic quality of intervening building elements. For example, we might consider: What effect will adding another layer of gypsum to a partition have? 

Conduct a post-occupancy survey and collect more data

After construction, we gather feedback on the effectiveness of the design. In the soundscaping approach, we combine a post-occupancy survey and update our acoustic metrics data. We can use this information to supplement traditional acoustic measurements and show compliance with technical design targets.

It can be difficult to quantify what makes an appropriate and comfortable sound environment. Asking people their opinion on the built environment helps us put a qualitative measurement on the outcome.

For example, on the design research project for the rugby club, my colleagues collected data that showed users found the space “chaotic” and “annoying.” Afterwards, the users told us it was a “pleasant,” “calm,” and “vibrant” experience. While not all these positive effects could be assigned to improved acoustics, they showed us that comfortable sound added to a positive experience.  

With the rapidly evolving nature of the workplace, acoustic design has never been more important. The office environment should be conducive to a workforce that draws from various generations and cultures and is neuro and aural diverse.

The office demands a new, integrated approach to acoustic design. Spaces with comfortable sound translate into triple bottom line improvements: people, planet, and profit.