Open plan office noise is stressful: Multimodal stress detection in a simulated work environment

Elizabeth J Sander; Cecelia Marques; Oliver Baumann; James R. Birt; Matthew Stead

Open plan office noise is stressful: Multimodal stress detection in a simulated work environment

Elizabeth J Sander, Cecelia Marques, Oliver Baumann, James R. Birt, Matthew Stead

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › Research › peer-review

Abstract

Covid-induced changes in the workplace present a timely opportunity for human resource management practitioners to consider and remediate the deleterious effects of noise, a commonly cited complaint of employees working in open-plan office environments. There is little experimental research comprehensively investigating the effects of noise on employees in terms of their cognitive performance, physiological indicators of stress, and affect. Employing a simulated office setting, we compared the effects of a typical open-plan office auditory environment to a quieter private office auditory environment on a range of objective and subjective measures of well-being and performance.
While open plan office noise did not reduce immediate cognitive task performance compared to the quieter environment, it did reduce psychological well-being as evidenced by self-reports of mood, facial expressions of emotion, and physiological indicators of stress in the form of heartrate and skin conductivity. Our research highlights the importance of using a multimodal approach to assess the impact of workplace stressors such as noise.

Original language	English
Number of pages	6
Publication status	Published - 25 Oct 2021
Event	EuroNoise 2021 and 52nd Spanish Congress of Acoustics- TECNIACUSTICA 2021 - Online, Madeira, Portugal Duration: 25 Oct 2021 → 27 Oct 2021 http://www.spacustica.pt/euronoise2021/index.html

Conference

Conference	EuroNoise 2021 and 52nd Spanish Congress of Acoustics- TECNIACUSTICA 2021
Country/Territory	Portugal
City	Madeira
Period	25/10/21 → 27/10/21
Other	EuroNoise 2021 will be organized by the Portuguese Acoustical Society (SPA), on behalf of the European Acoustical Association (EAA), and will also integrate the Iberian Encounter of Acoustics and the Spanish Congress of Acoustics - Tecniacústica2021, in cooperation with the Spanish Acoustical Society (SEA). The technical program of this Congress will cover the main topics of acoustics, including the classical themes and the most recently developed areas. A technical exhibition will be held during the Congress days, also in an online format, ensuring maximum visibility for the attendees and other interested people.
Internet address	http://www.spacustica.pt/euronoise2021/index.html

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Cite this

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title = "Open plan office noise is stressful: Multimodal stress detection in a simulated work environment",

abstract = "Covid-induced changes in the workplace present a timely opportunity for human resource management practitioners to consider and remediate the deleterious effects of noise, a commonly cited complaint of employees working in open-plan office environments. There is little experimental research comprehensively investigating the effects of noise on employees in terms of their cognitive performance, physiological indicators of stress, and affect. Employing a simulated office setting, we compared the effects of a typical open-plan office auditory environment to a quieter private office auditory environment on a range of objective and subjective measures of well-being and performance.While open plan office noise did not reduce immediate cognitive task performance compared to the quieter environment, it did reduce psychological well-being as evidenced by self-reports of mood, facial expressions of emotion, and physiological indicators of stress in the form of heartrate and skin conductivity. Our research highlights the importance of using a multimodal approach to assess the impact of workplace stressors such as noise.",

author = "Sander, {Elizabeth J} and Cecelia Marques and Oliver Baumann and Birt, {James R.} and Matthew Stead",

note = "Dear Elizabeth (Libby) Sander, Thanks for submitting your work {"}Open plan office noise is stressful: Multimodal stress detection in a simulated work environment{"} to Euronoise 2021. After final verification, we inform you that your final paper has been accepted for publication in the Euronoise 2021 proceedings and will be included in the final programme. Please note that we may still contact you if some formatting issues are detected. Since the congress will be held online, we are now preparing and configuring the online system to allow presentation and attendance by all participants. The congress will be based on the 'Zoom' platform, and closer to the congress dates we will send detailed instructions on how to access the system. In the meantime, we inform that all presentations (except plenary lectures) must be pre-recorded and sent to the organization, and so you may want to start preparing your own slides. A template will be made available in the next few days in the congress website. Although this is not mandatory, we highly recommend using this template or, at least, the cover slide. Each presentation slot will have 20 min, of which a maximum of 15 min will be allocated to the presentation itself. Since all presentations will be pre-recorded, the corresponding video will be played by the congress technical staff in the corresponding slot. Then, 3 or 4 minutes will be left for questions, and so the presenting author should be online and participating in the session, to be able to answer these questions. The video of each presentation should have between 10 min and 15 min, and should be recorded with a recommended resolution of 1280x720 or 720x576, in MP4 format. The file should be smaller than 200 MB, and should be named including the paper ID and the presenting author's name ({"}PAPERID_AUTHOR.mp4{"}). We recommend the use of MS Powerpoint for recording the presentation together with the audio comments to the slides (using the Record Slideshow option). Recent versions of MS Powerpoint also allow including the video of the presenter's face using a webcam, although this is not mandatory. After recording, the presentations should be sent to the congress email (euronoise2021@lnec.pt) using a file transfer service, such as, for example, {"}Wetransfer{"}, before October 11th. Please do not send your presentation as an email attachment! We look forward to see you (online) in Euronoise 2021! Best regards, Lu{\'i}s Godinho (Technical Chair of Euronoise 2021) Jorge Patr{\'i}cio (President of Euronoise 2021) ; EuroNoise 2021 and 52nd Spanish Congress of Acoustics- TECNIACUSTICA 2021 ; Conference date: 25-10-2021 Through 27-10-2021",

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AU - Marques, Cecelia

AU - Baumann, Oliver

AU - Birt, James R.

AU - Stead, Matthew

N1 - Dear Elizabeth (Libby) Sander, Thanks for submitting your work "Open plan office noise is stressful: Multimodal stress detection in a simulated work environment" to Euronoise 2021. After final verification, we inform you that your final paper has been accepted for publication in the Euronoise 2021 proceedings and will be included in the final programme. Please note that we may still contact you if some formatting issues are detected. Since the congress will be held online, we are now preparing and configuring the online system to allow presentation and attendance by all participants. The congress will be based on the 'Zoom' platform, and closer to the congress dates we will send detailed instructions on how to access the system. In the meantime, we inform that all presentations (except plenary lectures) must be pre-recorded and sent to the organization, and so you may want to start preparing your own slides. A template will be made available in the next few days in the congress website. Although this is not mandatory, we highly recommend using this template or, at least, the cover slide. Each presentation slot will have 20 min, of which a maximum of 15 min will be allocated to the presentation itself. Since all presentations will be pre-recorded, the corresponding video will be played by the congress technical staff in the corresponding slot. Then, 3 or 4 minutes will be left for questions, and so the presenting author should be online and participating in the session, to be able to answer these questions. The video of each presentation should have between 10 min and 15 min, and should be recorded with a recommended resolution of 1280x720 or 720x576, in MP4 format. The file should be smaller than 200 MB, and should be named including the paper ID and the presenting author's name ("PAPERID_AUTHOR.mp4"). We recommend the use of MS Powerpoint for recording the presentation together with the audio comments to the slides (using the Record Slideshow option). Recent versions of MS Powerpoint also allow including the video of the presenter's face using a webcam, although this is not mandatory. After recording, the presentations should be sent to the congress email (euronoise2021@lnec.pt) using a file transfer service, such as, for example, "Wetransfer", before October 11th. Please do not send your presentation as an email attachment! We look forward to see you (online) in Euronoise 2021! Best regards, Luís Godinho (Technical Chair of Euronoise 2021) Jorge Patrício (President of Euronoise 2021)

PY - 2021/10/25

Y1 - 2021/10/25

N2 - Covid-induced changes in the workplace present a timely opportunity for human resource management practitioners to consider and remediate the deleterious effects of noise, a commonly cited complaint of employees working in open-plan office environments. There is little experimental research comprehensively investigating the effects of noise on employees in terms of their cognitive performance, physiological indicators of stress, and affect. Employing a simulated office setting, we compared the effects of a typical open-plan office auditory environment to a quieter private office auditory environment on a range of objective and subjective measures of well-being and performance.While open plan office noise did not reduce immediate cognitive task performance compared to the quieter environment, it did reduce psychological well-being as evidenced by self-reports of mood, facial expressions of emotion, and physiological indicators of stress in the form of heartrate and skin conductivity. Our research highlights the importance of using a multimodal approach to assess the impact of workplace stressors such as noise.

AB - Covid-induced changes in the workplace present a timely opportunity for human resource management practitioners to consider and remediate the deleterious effects of noise, a commonly cited complaint of employees working in open-plan office environments. There is little experimental research comprehensively investigating the effects of noise on employees in terms of their cognitive performance, physiological indicators of stress, and affect. Employing a simulated office setting, we compared the effects of a typical open-plan office auditory environment to a quieter private office auditory environment on a range of objective and subjective measures of well-being and performance.While open plan office noise did not reduce immediate cognitive task performance compared to the quieter environment, it did reduce psychological well-being as evidenced by self-reports of mood, facial expressions of emotion, and physiological indicators of stress in the form of heartrate and skin conductivity. Our research highlights the importance of using a multimodal approach to assess the impact of workplace stressors such as noise.

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UR - http://www.mixedrealityresearch.com/

M3 - Paper

T2 - EuroNoise 2021 and 52nd Spanish Congress of Acoustics- TECNIACUSTICA 2021

Y2 - 25 October 2021 through 27 October 2021

ER -

Open plan office noise is stressful: Multimodal stress detection in a simulated work environment

Abstract

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