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To cite or reference this content, please use the following reference:
Haake, A. B. (2010). Music listening in offices: Balancing internal needs and external considerations (Doctoral thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield) accessed from www.musicatwork.net
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Summary
Across all three studies, the findings present a varied picture.
Music could be distracting while working, but could also help to manage other distractions in the office environment.
Music could be relaxing when employees chose to listen, but annoying when imposed.
Even though music was subordinate to work activities, it was nevertheless important in many different situations, for many different reasons. Many of the participants in the research reported that music in the office was very important to them in order to manage the auditory office environment and its distractions, to manage mood and internal thought processes, to accompany tedious work tasks and to inspire them.
There were many contextual aspects that were taken into account when employees listened at work (e.g. other people present, potential impact on organisation, demands relating to the job role), and these aspects shaped and modified their listening patterns.
The findings contribute to knowledge in that they show the important and multidimensional roles that music can play for employees and in which situations, which highlight the need to consider the workplace as a part of peoples’ everyday lives.
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I work for a pretty big company you might have herd of it amazon.com I am a picker basically I walk around for 10 hours with my little shopping cart and pick 1350 items 2 make rate I usually get 1500/1800. I have talked 2 managers and every one I could to get a radio in there after weeks of convincing they said I could bring one in it was great but I could not take it out without a security badge which I’m not eligible for since I’m tier 1 associate but I took it in their anyways it was great until it came up missing. Just wondering if you had any advice that might help me sway my bosses and improve the lives of my coworkers. They are always pushing time on task and productivity not only do I think music would help them but us workers 2.
Hi Cory! Thanks for your comment! It is really interesting to hear about how it works in different companies, and how different attitudes to music can be. It is very common that it is down to individual managers whether workers are allowed music or not, and their reasoning for this may not always be well thought through. Not only in my own research, but in much research previously, it has been argued that music listening can be beneficial for monotonous jobs – which is what your job is like, if I understand you correctly. Having control over the music is a very important factor in this – so, in other words, managers just choosing music for their employees in a ‘one size fits all’ kind of way is usually not that good. Instead, when employees can control and choose their music at work (at least to some extent), then it has several positive effects. These effects seem to start with feelings of positive mood and well-being, and also by employees perhaps not being disturbed by other kinds of noise. These things can then ‘rub off’ on productivity. The problem is that some managers do not particularly care about the well-being of their workers, as long as they work fast and hard. I don’t know if this is the case at your workplace. But if this is the case, the managers may not be as interested in music at work, because they can not see a clear connection between music and productivity. My own opinion is that this is a very crass way of looking at things, and probably even a false economy. With that, I mean that if organisations do not look after their employees in terms of well-being and job satisfaction, they are likely to have more people off sick, and people leaving – which means large financial costs. So even if it is difficult to prove that music has a direct impact on pure productivity, it can still have clear relationships with profits and finance of the organisation as a whole. From my point of view, it would be easy to point to studies of where music is beneficial for monotonous jobs and argue that the costs of facilitating music would be beneficial for them – and I am thinking in terms of your job satisfaction, mood and well-being which also affects concentration. But whether your managers would listen, and would be interested to try, I don’t know. I wish you the best of luck, and thanks again for your comments. /anneli