Ayoko and teammates reviewed how office noise influences employee mood (affect), which is particularly important because more positive moods enhance cognitive performance, getting along with other people, wellbeing, and health. The research team reports that data collected in an open office showed that higher levels of perceived office noise were linked to more negative moods, and those more negative moods could in turn be tied to greater employee withdrawal and task conflict as well as to people trying to mark their physical territories: “Specifically, we found that, as perceived open-plan office noise increases, the relative experience of negative affect also increases. These findings . . . suggest that adoption of open-plan offices may indeed hinder productivity, especially if office noise (and the resulting employee perceptions of noise) is not controlled. . . . managers need to think about how to create privacy in an open plan office to maintain individual spaces and block out distractions. . . . Managers may need to provide employees with offices that allow a fit between job types and workspaces such that employees involved in complex work requiring high concentration are afforded appropriate levels of privacy.”
Oluremi Ayoko, Neal Ashkanasy, Yiqiong Li, Alana Dorris, and Karen Jehn. 2023. “An Experience Sampling Study of Employees’ Reactions to Noise in the Open-Plan Office.” Journal of Business Research, vol. 155, Part B, 113445, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113445
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.