A good reason for keeping quiet
Combatting noise at work isn’t just an auditory health issue in industry or the building trades. It’s a question of intellectual efficiency that concerns us all.
How can we make sure we hear — and understand — information that concerns us? And, even more important, how can we avoid tuning in to information that is likely to disturb us? That’s the dilemma our auditory system faces when we’re at the office.
A recent IFOP-JNA survey found that 59 percent of workers complain they are bothered by noise — a useful reminder that the quieter the work environment is, the more effective the brain is at detecting and recognizing the most important signals. But noise doesn’t just tire us out by making understanding more difficult; it also makes concentration more difficult. Our brains prioritize loud voices and rising noise levels because they are potentially associated with a source of danger, to the detriment of what we were in the middle of doing.
What’s the solution? Total silence … or almost, since it is possible to use sounds that help us concentrate to mask speech frequencies.
To go further :
“59% des actifs en France déclarent être gênés par le bruit au travail, selon l’edp-audio.fr/actualites/a-la-une/6644-59-des-actifs-en-france-declarent-etre-genes-par-le-bruit-au-travail-selon-l-enquete-ifop-jna ” (edu-audio.fr, 11 octobre 2019)
Enquête IFOP-JNA
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