Hybrid working? Optimise acoustics!

Hybrid working poses some challenges when it comes to setting up your office. Hybrid working occurs when employees work in the office with employees who work remotely, for example from home. The Teams/Zoom meetings, in particular, are here to stay and cause a lot of (noise) inconvenience in the office. Moreover, people are less able to cope with annoying noises since they have worked from home (in peace) for a longer period of time.

The challenges in your office design lie in various areas, such as interrelationships between employees and the organization, IT support to make forms of cooperation possible and the optimal acoustics in the various spaces that come with hybrid working.

In this article, you can read more about how good office acoustics can optimally enable your employees to work in a hybrid way.

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Add sound-absorbing materials

If the acoustics are right, the experience and comfort will improve enormously, and thus your employees' happiness at work. Furniture and materials all have an impact on the acoustics in a room. Starting from the location of the room and what is happening inside the room, it is good to consider whether it is necessary to add acoustically absorbing materials. You can do this based on your own observations, based on an expert's opinion, or based on the results of an acoustic measurement. The sound-absorbing elements can be added in various ways. This includes acoustic materials on the ceiling, floor and walls. But adding soft, acoustic finishes to furniture to attenuate the sound can also help enormously. The same goes for adding partitions with acoustic value.

‍Spatial layout of your office

It's important to consider the neighboring areas when planning hybrid collaboration spaces. A constant hum, for example, is far less annoying than interrupted noises. Teams often don't find a conversation from their own team that annoying, but they do experience noise from other teams as annoying and annoying. Open collaboration spaces (with relatively more noise) should preferably be kept away from departments where employees are working “with their head down” in extreme concentration.

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‍Meetings in privacy‍

To be able to meet in privacy (live or online), creating spaces where the sound stays inside is a good option. In addition, it ensures that people in the vicinity are also protected from possible distractions. To do this, you can use acoustic walls that block sound from one area to another. In the “open plan” work environments, phone booths and meeting pods can provide acoustic privacy.

‍Sound masking: create a background sound

In contrast to white noise, sound masking uses precise filtering to create a silent, uniform, and airstream-like background sound, based on the overlap with the frequencies of human speech alone. This can greatly improve the ability to focus. Plus, it offers extra acoustic privacy.

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Acoustic partitions

Screens, panels, and free-standing elements can help keep sound in the open space and block noise coming from other areas in the vicinity. This includes placing Pods that give employees more opportunities to make uninterrupted video calls in open spaces.

Learn more about our unique approach and our solutions and products? Our expert team is here for you. Feel free to take contactIt's up with us!

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