EVER WONDERED, that your workplace ambience, can con-tribute to your performance and stress levels? According to a study, acoustic conditions profoundly im-pact human performance in every work environment. Pin-drop silence at office is causing mental disturbance and affecting performance in corpo-rate culture, affecting the “productiv-ity” of the workforce.

It is a fact that extreme quietness in an office can lead to stress because the significance of even the smallest noise is magnified. According to the experts, too-quiet offices are a growing prob-lem. Double-glazing, efficient air con-ditioning and computers that run without internal fans mean that the level of noise is lower than ever before. Nevertheless, the worker’s productiv-ity and its link to acoustic conditions remains little known among the plan-ners, architects and design profession-als in India. “We in India design offices according to the requirements of the profession, and terms of the com-pany” says Dheeraj Sinha, a space de-signer. “Acoustic conditions do matter, but the syndrome is not known as such” adds Dheeraj who has designed high-end offices for multinationals in Delhi and Gurgaon.

Talking to some IT professionals from topnotch companies in Delhi and Banglore, one can easily conclude that the syndrome is fast gripping the Indians too. And they are reacting to the stealthy opponent, the sound of si-lence. The IT professionals found the almost complete silence in their cubi-cles unhealthily stressful. Some said it made them feel lonely. On the rare oc- casions when the silence was shat-tered by a telephone ring, some work-ers put down their pens to eavesdrop on the conversation. The study also states that workers, working in this low-level noise environment, experi-enced significantly higher levels of stress, made fewer attempts to solve difficult problems and were low on productivity too. Hermetically sealed buildings, soundless technology and aggressively boring workloads are ac-tually adding to the high stress level of workers.

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