Fixing the open plan noise crisis in the age of hybrid working

by • Company news, Workplace design

Research consistently shows that excessive noise is the number one cause of distraction in the modern workplace. Hybrid working has changed how open-plan offices are used, but acoustic design has not always kept pace.Research consistently shows that excessive noise is the number one cause of distraction in the modern workplace. Hybrid working has changed how open-plan offices are used, but acoustic design has not always kept pace. Hybrid workplaces now ask more activities to coexist within the same space. Video calls, informal meetings, collaborative work, and focused individual tasks may all happen alongside one another, while occupancy can change dramatically throughout the week.

A workplace that once supported mainly desk-based concentration can behave very differently when several people are now taking online calls from the same open-plan area. The physical space may not have changed, but the way it is being used has. The result is not simply more noise. It is a wider range of activities competing within the same acoustic environment, often with very different requirements.

 

Workplace Zoning Needs Acoustic Consideration

Modern workplaces are often carefully zoned, with different furniture, finishes, and layouts used to create areas for collaboration, focus, and informal interaction. But a workplace can look well zoned on a plan while remaining acoustically connected. Furniture, colour, and flooring may define different areas visually, but they do little on their own to stop a conversation in one zone dominating another.

The aim should not be to make every part of the office equally quiet. It should be to decide where conversation is encouraged, where people can take calls, where concentrated work happens, and where privacy matters. This is where strategic office acoustic design needs to be considered alongside space planning. Good acoustic planning starts with understanding how those activities interact, rather than simply choosing finishes.

As offices continue to evolve around hybrid working, understanding which activities can comfortably coexist is becoming an increasingly important part of workplace design.

 

Diagnosing the True Source of Office Noise

The word ‘noise’ is often used to describe very different acoustic problems. A reverberant office, where sound reflects from hard surfaces, is different from a quiet office where direct speech travels clearly between desks. Poor sound insulation between rooms, mechanical noise, and badly positioned activities create different problems again.

They should not automatically lead to the same solution. Acoustic absorption can reduce reverberation and the build-up of reflected sound, but it cannot completely remove the direct sound of somebody speaking nearby. Conversely, changing the layout will not solve a room where excessive reverberation is the main issue.

A good acoustic assessment therefore starts by identifying what is actually causing the complaint. For instance, installing suspended acoustic ceiling rafts or targeted wall panels absorbs reverberation effectively, while desk dividers and acoustic zoning help block direct speech transmission. Before deciding on a treatment, the more useful question is: what are people hearing that they should not be hearing?

 

Why Quieter Isn’t Always Better

One of the more counterintuitive things I notice when visiting workplaces is that some of the strongest complaints about distraction come from offices that are already very quiet.

This is especially noticeable in offices occupied by lawyers, engineers, accountants, and other teams whose work involves long periods of concentration. These spaces often have very little background sound, which means a single conversation can become unusually prominent.

A phone call several desks away may dominate the room. A conversation that would blend into the general activity of a busier office can remain intelligible across much of the floor. That creates distraction for those nearby and, in some cases, concerns about privacy for the person speaking.

In busier offices, there is often a steady level of ambient activity. People talk, move around, and interact throughout the day, so individual voices are less likely to stand out. That does not mean more noise is automatically better. It simply shows that acoustic quality is about more than volume. Speech intelligibility, privacy, and the relationship between different activities all matter.

 

Acoustic Design for the Hybrid Workplace

Hybrid working has not created every acoustic problem found in open-plan offices, but it has exposed weaknesses in spaces designed around more predictable patterns of work.

Open-plan offices are social environments, and hybrid working has made collaboration an even more important part of why people come into them. The challenge is to support that interaction without making concentration or privacy unnecessarily difficult. That requires acoustics to be considered alongside layout, furniture, technology, and workplace behaviour as offices continue to evolve.

The best workplace is not necessarily the quietest. It is one where people can talk without distracting everyone around them, concentrate without relying on headphones all day, and hold a confidential conversation without feeling that half the office can follow it.