They do fairly well by adopting actions that “distract the distractions,” mainly by listening to music or simply by wearing noise-reducing headphones. Most people just accept it and learn to adapt-somewhat. And 21.5 minutes is a conservative estimate- an additional 2014 Steelcase/Ipsos study found that employees lost as much as 86 minutes per day due to noise distractions!

If you have 100 employees at an average of $50,000 each, you’re losing $200,000 a year in lost productivity. In a recent study presented to the International Congress of Noise as a Public Health, researchers found that on average employees wasted 21.5 minutes per day due to conversational distractions, which based upon an 8-hour day, is about 4% of an average day. When you’re trying to focus on a task and overhear a hallway conversation, even when you’re not meaning to, you lose track of what you were doing. One limitation lies in our capacity to process what’s happening in the world around us, everything from the room temperature to the quality of the lighting. The brain isn’t a marvel of infinite capacity we are, after all, only human, with all the limitations that implies. According to research from UC Irvine, office workers are interrupted once every 11 minutes, and it can take up to 23 minutes to get back to what you were doing before you were interrupted. However, I hear just as many complaints about the walk-in visitors, interruptions, and noise level negatively affecting workplace satisfaction, productivity, and speech privacy. Some people speak of them positively, citing the ability to collaborate with coworkers and the creative feeling they can inspire. These open floor plans have become “the new normal” in many organizations. Many workplaces today feature more open spaces and smaller, and often shared, workstations.

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