Workers are taking stress leave due to noisy offices — but don’t call them snowflakes

Know the feeling? (Picture: Getty Images)

If you’re reading this at your desk, pause for a moment and take in the sounds around you.

Whether it’s a colleague giving their best spiel on a sales call or a cleanerdragging their vacuum over the carpet, the average office can be a pretty noisy place — and for many, that takes a toll.

In a survey of 2,000 UK office workers by Oscar Acoustics, 24% said they’ve taken time off due to noise-related stress, while nearly a third (32%) admitted to delivering lower-quality work or missing deadlines as a result.

More than one in four (26%) respondents also claimed noise causes them to snap at colleagues on a monthly basis, and almost half (45%) said it’s led them to consider leaving their job.

That may seem extreme to some, but the audiological inconveniences of open plan working are commonly complained about online.

On an r/AskUK thread discussing the topic, Petrichor_ness commented: ‘One of the many reasons I’m self employed and WFH now is I can’t work in noise. If there are people talking near me, I can’t write. I’m not being a killjoy, it’s just the way my mind works.’

Some have resorted to wearing noise cancelling headphones, but this isn’t an option for everyone (Picture: Getty Images/Maskot)

Software engineer HirsuteHacker, said they find it ‘infuriating trying to focus when the sales team are in,’ writing: ‘It’s ridiculous how loud they can be. Some roles require a lot of focus. It’s stupid to put those employees in the same rooms as the noisy lot.’

‘Ours is like a zoo half the time, you can’t book a room love nor money so I stay home majority of it,’ added Cococannnon.

Others claimed they prefer the buzz of a busy workplace, arguing that noise-sensitive staff should use headphones or go elsewhere if they’re bothered — but for 23%, this simply isn’t an option.

As Dr Amanda Jones, reader in organisational behaviour and the future of work at King’s Business School, explains, the reason a number of employers have shifted away from individual or enclosed design is (alongside the economic benefit) to ‘encourage communication and collaboration by bringing people together.’

However, studies suggest greater physical proximity may actually result in less face-to-face interaction, with employees making greater use of electronic communication when in the office. And since the pandemic, hybrid working has further ‘challenged that established context.’

‘Many organisations have reduced their office footprint while employees have become accustomed to having much greater control over their working environment at home,’ Dr Jones tells Metro.

‘This means the office now has to accommodate a rather different workforce, often within reduced space, and organisations perhaps haven’t yet fully worked out what they want the post-pandemic office to be for.’

Nowadays, it’s standard for some staff to spend hours every day at their desk on Zoom calls, whereas previously meetings would be held in separate rooms away from those who needed to get their heads down.

Open plan working isn’t quite as collaborative as it was designed to be (Picture: Getty Images)

According to Dr Jones, ‘research has consistently identified noise, distraction and lack of privacy as important disadvantages’ of this modern way of working.

She continues: ‘Speech is particularly distracting because it is difficult for us simply to tune out meaningful conversations around us, and this can be especially challenging for some people, including some neurodivergent employees.

‘That can make work requiring sustained concentration or working memory more difficult.’

While you may roll your eyes at what you see as yet another example of thin-skinned Gen Z grumnling, Dr Jones stresses that this isn’t necessarily down ‘a lack of resilience’ on the part of staff.

‘I think the bigger question for employers therefore isn’t simply, “How do we make people tolerate noise?”, but “What are we asking people to come into the office to do?”‘ she explains.

‘If the purpose is collaboration, organisations need environments where interaction is genuinely possible and legitimate. But people also need somewhere to concentrate when their work requires it.’

What makes a noisy office?

When it comes to why open plan offices are so hard to focus in, Ben Hancock, managing director of Oscar Acoustics, tells Metro: ‘Say the word cat in a hard, echoey room, and it bounces around for up to three seconds before fading away. 

‘In that time, you’ve spoken about eight more words, and they’re all overlapping each other. Now multiply that noise by every person speaking in the office. That’s why you can hear everything and understand almost nothing.’

This is as close as you’ll get to a quiet area in many offices (Picture: Getty Images)

Certain features make this worse, including hard floors, glass, and lots of reflective surfaces, turning normal conversation ‘into a wall of noise.’

Ben also highlights that layout can make quiet spaces feel like the exact opposite, like placing focus areas next to kitchens or informal meeting points without ‘distance and absorption’ in between — which means more than a flimsy screen.

‘Most employers reach for the wrong solution for excessive noise,’ he continues. ‘Desk dividers and a few plants look like they are doing something, but they barely touch the problem.

‘The biggest opportunity in almost any office is the ceiling, as it’s the room’s largest unbroken surface. Treat that with an acoustic spray and problem solved!’

Now if we could all just get our bosses to take note…

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@metro.co.uk

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