How to (open) plan ahead: Reducing noise in collaborative spaces

You may have recently come across a number of articles focused on noise and productivity in open plan workspaces. The conversation has been reignited in part thanks to a journal publication out of Harvard Business School, which challenged the claim that open plan workspaces bolster productivity. However, recent studies suggest that the issue may be more nuanced. The Udemy Workplace Distraction Report shows that chatty coworkers (80%) and office noise (70%) are top sources of distraction in the workplace among respondents. When asked how these distractions affect their performance, 54% of respondents said that distractions keep them from performing as well as they could and 50% said that they feel significantly less productive. Gensler has also developed an internal survey mechanism (WPIx) to assess international workplace trends. Their survey results show that while respondents from the US prefer some private, enclosed spaces, respondents from Germany would sooner work in open, collaborative environments with a mere 4% reporting a preference to having private offices.

Survey results like these offer an opportunity to answer the question as to how a collaborative, albeit distraction-prone, environment like open plan can provide a greater sense of productivity, workability and well-being.

As it so happens, there are experts actively investigating how the planning and design of an effective open plan should take shape. One of these experts is Emily Dunn, a workplace strategist at Herman Miller, who was kind enough to offer her thoughts on what designers should consider when designing for collaborative spaces:

The workplace should be customized based on the desired staff experience. For example, the activities conducted in a law firm might not be best supported in an entirely open plan design due to an increased need for privacy. What projects need to do, is create an active workplace that provides choice, variety and flexibility for staff. When we talk about an active workplace at Herman Miller, it’s often in reference to continually shifting through various settings in a given day. An employee might respond to emails from their desk, move to a project room for group work, focus in a quiet nook, or brainstorm with colleagues in an inspiring plaza. An active workplace empowers employees to take advantage of a purposeful variety of furnishings, settings and tools—each designed for a specific type of work—rather than try to accomplish everything from a singular workspace. This choice in setting also considers the idea that distractions are often perceived on an individual level and are predicated by state of mind, mood and the task at hand. The distractions that impact employees’ ability to complete a task are commonly either an audible or visual distraction. In an effort to understand the support that individuals need, organizations can administer employee occupancy surveys to better understand how specific distractions may interrupt specific tasks. The insights gathered from these and other data sources provide guidance for creating the right variety of settings in the correct proportions, and speak to the tools, technologies and management methods that will most effectively support the employee experience.

If noise is a leading concern in the workplace, is workplace strategy, furniture design and office layout enough to mitigate this potential distraction? In all too common cases, there can be no escape from the impact of noise on occupants in an open plan. This is exacerbated in spaces that lack flexible design and private breakout spaces, leaving occupants feeling confined to their workstations. Fortunately, acousticians have been aware of this issue since the inception of the open plan office, and have been instrumental in developing invaluable guidelines for acoustical comfort in such spaces.

In some instances, the issue of noise is being addressed through building regulations. For example, Finland recently established regulations for new buildings to better align high-performance workspaces with additional quantifiable acoustic metrics. Another recent standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) provides measurement techniques for assessors to reliably capture the following metrics on-site:

• STI or Speech Transmission Index. This is the level of intelligibility of speech at a given measurement location, presented from 0.0 (no intelligibility) to 1.0 (complete intelligibility). The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health identified that cognitive performance decreases as STI increases (above 0.5).
• rD or distraction radius. This is the distance [meters] from a talker where the intelligibility of speech (STI) falls below 0.5. For a Class A building in Finland, an rD <5m is required.
• D2s or spatial decay rate of speech. This is the reduction of sound pressure level (in dBA) of a talker over a set distance [meters]. For a Class A building in Finland, a D2s >11 is required.
• Lp,S,4m or the speech level at 4m from a talker. For a Class A building in Finland, an Lp,S,4m <48 is required.

Finland is also joined by Germany, France and Norway in the standardization of these metrics.

Strategic layout and furnishing of an open plan (i.e., selection of absorptive surface materials, distance between workstations, use of physical barriers) will ultimately influence the results of the above parameters and are thus factors which should be considered when designing open plan offices.

So how exactly can these measured metrics influence design and promote the flexibility that experts like Emily say is necessary? This question is currently being explored by an ISO working group focused on defining acoustic quality of open office spaces. The working group features two WELL Sound concept advisors, Andy Parkin and Jack Harvie-Clark, who are representing the British Standards Institution (BSI), in addition to WELL Sound Concept Lead Ethan Bourdeau as a representative of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Jack Harvie-Clark and Andy Parkin explain the rationale for standard development:

Jack:
ISO/WD 22955 is taking a new approach to enabling good acoustic conditions for office workers. Traditional acoustic design guidance focuses on the acoustic response or conditions in the room to infer the conditions for the occupants. This standard starts with the occupants’ experience and works outwards to identify the acoustic requirements; these are described in terms of ambient noise in use at the workstation, the acoustic relation with neighboring workstations and then the acoustic response across the floor plate. Appropriate standards at each level of consideration are identified as a function of the type of work being carried out. A significant advancement of the standard is the addition of a method to assess the impact of different types of activities upon one another. This part will help workspace designers and users understand when and why they need to protect the more sensitive workstation from intrusive sound and offer guidance on how to do so.

Andy:
We work far more collaboratively now and our offices need to support the activities of communication, as well as privacy. There is also a shift (in the right direction) to design buildings around the people using them, rather than designing a building, then expecting people to use them productively. Much of the original guidance for office design does not reflect how we now work or design and therefore emerging standards such as the FIS Guide to Office Acoustics and WELL are proving most useful. In recognition of this, the new ISO standard for Acoustic Quality in open plan offices is being developed and it aims to take into account new ways of working (including agile and co-working), using activity-based working and proposing metrics to help designers best reflect the needs of contemporary employers and workers.

What do these findings indicate? There are solutions that can be standardized, analyzed and designed to reduce noise-induced distraction within collaborative spaces. Understanding the expectations of employees at an organizational level can help guide a project team in designing an open plan that fosters productivity, focus and ultimately improves occupant experience.

Explore the WELL Sound concept to learn more about designing for optimal open plan acoustics.

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