Acoustic Panels for Open Office Spaces: A Productivity Booster

Are you looking for a way to enhance productivity in your office? Perhaps you feel that your employees are tired and find noise as the main reason behind this? If so, you should consider installing acoustic panels for open office spaces – the main topic of this article. How can they help you? Find out below.

Let Your Employees Focus with Acoustic Panels for Open Office Spaces

We will begin by describing how acoustic panels can help your employees focus.

Open office spaces are characterized by a lot of hassle. Conversations, brainstorming, keyboard clicking – all these sounds might distract your employees, thus making them significantly less productive.

Acoustic panels successfully eliminate this problem. Instead of reflecting these noises (like, for instance, walls), they absorb them and turn them into heat, making your office not only quieter but also warmer.

As a result, your employees focus better. This means that they can do more tasks at the same time and make fewer mistakes. It is especially crucial when handling more complex, demanding assignments – those which take a lot of time.

Less Exhaustion = Better Results

Another often overlooked aspect of noise is exhaustion. Open office space is often overstimulating for the people inside it as all the different sounds in it make people get tired more quickly.

While it might seem like a minor nuisance, this can actually have dire consequences. What exactly can happen? Take a look below.

• Less energy for work – The first consequence is pretty obvious – your employees are too tired to complete all their tasks and, in the end, do less than they are capable of.
  
  
• Frequent breaks – With energy levels dropping, the number of breaks rise;
  too much noise can lead to your workers spending significantly more time on breaks, especially if the kitchen or break room is quieter.
  
  
• Overall exhaustion – Noise doesn’t only drain the energy from your employees daily – it also makes them less satisfied with their jobs and more susceptible to burnout.

Acoustic panels can help you reduce the noise, thus eliminating the above consequences. Thus, the conclusion here is simple: they are a must for open office space if you wish to have a full-of-energy, ready-for-challenges workforce.

Speech Intelligibility and Productivity

Do you know this situation when you try to say something to your employee, but you need to repeat it twice or three times for them to understand? Or perhaps you need to speak extremely slowly to be understood at all? We’ve all been there. But do you know what is the cause of such situations? Usually, bad acoustics.

Noise is either absorbed or reflected depending on the surface it hits. However, most surfaces reflect sound waves unequally, causing a drop in noise clarity. Acoustic panels, on the other hand, do it evenly in every direction, making the sounds intelligible even after a few reflections.

Why is it important? Because it means that with acoustic panels, you can reduce the problems with speech intelligibility and improve the time in which your employees exchange information. As a result, you can boost the cooperation within your teams, and the general productivity in your office.

How Acoustic Panels for Open Office Space Can Reduce Stress

Finally, acoustic panels can help you increase the mental comfort of your employees and reduce their stress levels. It all comes down to the impression that the office hassle creates.

The noises of clicking and typing create a “work” atmosphere – this impression that everybody is working extremely hard. While to a certain extent, it might be helpful and boost your employees' productivity, at some point, it becomes a double-edged sword – it stresses out your workers, making them less efficient. Acoustic panels can eliminate this problem.

With sound-absorbing acoustic panels for your open office, you can make these sounds less prevalent. Surely, your employees will still sometimes hear them, but all in all, this feeling of “work” won’t fall on them so heavily. As a result, they will feel less stressed and have more energy to perform their tasks efficiently. Plus, once again, you minimize the risk of employee burnout.

Office Pods – A Useful Alternative

If you feel that acoustic panels are not the finest choice for your office, you may opt for an alternative – office booths. These come in different sizes and can accommodate from one up to eight people. While they won’t reduce the noise in your whole open office space, as acoustic panels would, they will create special areas for those who wish to avoid the constant hassle – even if you install panels, it’s good to have one or two office pods to give your employees a choice.

The Takeaway

As you can see, acoustic panels come with many advantages for open office space productivity. Not only do they improve focus, but also enhance cooperation (by making speech more intelligible), reduce the fatigue of your employees caused by noise, and make working in the office less stressful. Therefore, we strongly advise you to place them in your office.