Today’s open-plan offices are filled with energy and life, but for many employees, especially people with PTSD, autism, ADHD or other traits that affect processing stimuli, working on an open floor can lead to sensory overload. Sensory overload occurs when the senses are confronted with excessive stimulation from the surroundings, which often results in decreased performance and poorer well-being. For this reason, a large number of companies seek effective solutions to help reduce over-stimulation and provide employees with optimal working conditions. Acoustic pods work well as an escape from noise, offering employees a space to recover, refocus and take a break from different stimuli.
What occurs in a human brain that is bombarded with stimuli?
When the human brain faces exposure to excess stimuli, it starts a complex stress response to prepare the body to take action. Response to overstimulation involves rising adrenaline and noradrenaline levels. This causes several physiological changes, including increased heart rate, blood flow to the muscles, and even abdominal cramps. These all are parts of the human fight-or-flight response to perceived threats. In fact, longer and intense stimuli can stall action. When this happens, unless you do something that helps ease the stress, prolonged overstimulation will lead to an increase in stress hormone levels and disrupt the body’s normal functions. It’s important to note that excess stimuli affect physiological functions, but they also impact emotional and cognitive processes, which leads to a significant reduction in the brain’s adaptive capacity.
Sensory overload from the office: what effect does it have on work?
It is common for employees in an open-plan office to be overwhelmed by excessive sound and visual stimuli. This affects people with disorders such as ADHD or autism particularly strongly. Noise, overly bright lighting, constant ambient activity, and numerous other stimuli can impact different senses simultaneously.
Noteworthy is that sensory overload at work not only affects people’s well-being but their performance as well, leading to increased feelings of anxiety. Although short episodes of stress, known as eustress, may act as encouragement, prolonged high levels of stress impair a person’s ability to concentrate and negatively affect the quality of their work. In addition, work-related sensory overload may lead to emotional and psychological exhaustion, and this increases the likelihood of professional burnout, irritability and the deterioration of team relationships. Working in this kind of environment results in more sick days, as employees seek refuge at home from excess stimuli at work.
Proper floor layouts will help both small and large offices in managing sensory overload. Spaces like Hushoffice acoustic work pods should be provided for employees to calm down, do focused work and meet in a quiet environment.
What causes sensory overload in the office?
In the office, there are a number of sources of sensory overload that can negatively affect people’s comfort and quality of work. The most common distractors that disrupt focus include ambient sounds like conversations, phones ringing or device notifications. Visual stimuli also play a significant part, as bright, intense lighting can be tiring for the eyes. Additionally, constant traffic on the floor and visual chaos can also be distracting. Unwanted odours and changing temperature also add to the lack of comfort, as well as sharing limited workspace, which strips employees of their privacy and invades personal space. These distractors can be identified through surveys, for example, which will help to understand the particular needs of employees and personalise the work environment accordingly.
How to reduce stimuli in the open-plan office?
Companies need to implement appropriate design and organisational strategies to effectively combat sensory overload for people in their open-plan offices. Using panels that absorb sound to improve acoustics may be the first step. You can break up the space with partitions, potted plants or hushFree.M office pods, which ensure a peaceful and quiet space with controllable surroundings. If you place pods appropriately around the office, you can create quiet areas dedicated to conceptual work or active zones better suited for collaboration and the free exchange of ideas. The introduction of flextime hours and remote work will help reduce the office occupancy rate, which naturally lowers stimulus levels in the work environment.
Office acoustic work pods: sensory-friendly spaces
While they have many advantages, contemporary offices often are sources of too much noise and distraction. Introducing portable acoustic pods like hushFree.S in the office allows employees to get away from the busy open space for at least a while. Pods for one person provide a cosy, isolated environment, which promotes a person to recover and escape excess stimuli for a short while. They are compact, self-contained cabins designed to take up so little space they can fit into any size of an office. Plus, they come with ventilation and adjustable lighting for everyone to tailor conditions to their needs. To give your employees a moment for calm relaxation close to nature, consider placing them near a window.
Amelia Hart, a psychology graduate from the University of Hertfordshire, has a keen interest in the fields of mental health, wellness, and lifestyle.
This article was written by Amelia Hart from www.psychreg.org
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