Researchers say open-plan offices can increase stress.

A new study by Libby Sanders, assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Bond University, says office noise has a significant impact on staff. 

The paper found office noise can raise workers’ sweat response by 34 per cent.

“I worked in industry before I became an academic,” Dr Sanders has told the ABC.

“Often I had to listen to people talking all day about what was wrong with their workplace, when they were trying to concentrate and get things done.

“I was also involved in designing offices and then looking at the effects on people.

“And there hasn't been a lot of experimental research that's really controlled things to show if this is actually a causal relationship.”

Her new paper, ‘Open-plan office noise is stressful: multimodal stress detection in a simulated work environment’, involved 43 people who helped test the noise theory in a simulated office environment.

“We had a recording of combined noises — phones, printing, people talking — to make sure everyone had the same exposure and the same level of noise,” she said.

“Then we set up an environment that looked like an open-plan office and we had people doing tasks that are similar to what you would do in an office, that required concentration.

“We found a 34 per increase in sweat response, which is something you might not even notice.

“It doesn't mean someone's dripping buckets of sweat at their desk, but it's a really strong indicator that you're experiencing stress.

“Over time, increased stress will have significant effects on our mental and our physical health.

“Their negative mood went up by 25 per cent when they are exposed to the open-plan office noise, which is really significant and obviously leads to lots of potentially negative outcomes.

“In terms of our job itself, it makes us more likely to be less satisfied, less committed to the organisation and ultimately leave.”

An intriguing aspect of the study involved using an artificial intelligence (AI) system to assess people’s mood throughout the experiment. 

The results showed that participant’s self-reported moods levels were lower than the AI could spot, suggesting people were actually suppressing the emotions on their face.

“We can't assume by walking around the office and thinking that everyone looks fine that they're actually okay,” Dr Sanders said.