Before bosses go ahead and sign leases on offices, it is important they think through all the details and ensure that the spaces will suit their organisations perfectly.
After all, there are lots of serviced office rental opportunities available for managers to peruse, so there is no need for them to settle for second best.
As well as making sure they select premises in the right areas that look the part and have all the right facilities, it may be important for company leaders to think about the issue of noise.
Writing on Wired.co.uk recently, Julian Treasure, chairman of The Sound Agency, suggested that as well as being a nuisance, excessive noise has become a “very real and major issue for our health, society and productivity”.
He pointed out that the economic cost of traffic noise alone has been estimated by the European Union to equate to around €40 billion (£32.5 billion) a year.
Mr Treasure Added: “The good news is that, when designed, deployed or curated properly, sound can positively impact the way we feel and make us more productive in performing everyday tasks. Natural sounds like wind, water and birdsong can have powerful beneficial effects: these sounds are deeply ingrained in the human psyche and work at a non-conscious level.”
He went on to suggest that un-designed and uncontrolled sound, such as the “rumble or air conditioning”, computers and other equipment, as well as the “din of road and air traffic” and other people’s voices can do damage to people’s wellbeing.
To combat the ill-effects, he claimed that business centres and other premises can benefit from “tightly-defined zones”, sound absorbing surfaces and even use carefully designed soundscapes, which are sound systems that play birdsong, classical music and so on.
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