Workplace Hearing Health Week is happening right now. The organizers questioned French employees: more than one in two suffers from noise at work. Among them, teleworkers, who can no longer stand the noise of the office.
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When you have tasted the silence of work at home, it is difficult to return to the noisy environment of the office. This is shown by the Ifop-JNA barometer, carried out on the occasion of Hearing Health Week at work. 53% of employees in telework regret coming to work in their company because of the noise that reigns there.
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It is especially those who practice high-dose teleworking, two to three days a week, who can hardly bear to set foot back at work. Ifop notes that in terms of noise, the tolerance threshold that some working people could previously accept has become lower since they experimented with other organizations such as teleworking.
The first source of noise pollution comes from outside: 35% of employees complain about noise from outside. Then come the comings and goings of colleagues, office conversations, pointed out by 27% of respondents and the operation of certain devices, such as printers, pointed out by a quarter of employees.
Noise is not a problem that is limited to theopen space and the professions most affected by noise are not those which are exercised in an office. At the top of the employees who complain the most about noise come those who work in automobile repair, transport, storage, accommodation and catering. Next come agriculture, industry and buildings and public works, followed only by services and administration. In general, it is workers in the Ile-de-France region who are the most bothered by noise.
Fatigue is the first consequence of noise experienced at work. Next come the weariness and irritability noted by workers exposed to noise. Two-thirds of them are subject to these ailments. Then come stress, unhappiness, anxiety and even depression. But we also talk about misunderstandings and tensions within teams, aggressiveness in exchanges and withdrawal. Surprising element of this study: the youngest are more sensitive to noise than those over fifty, as if seniors had become more accustomed to noise pollution.