Music can be really an help in a working environment, lowering the stress, improving concentration, giving energy and, as it was shown by different academical studies and by the experience of Plantonics and Spotify, increasing the productivity. Anyway not all the musics are suitable for the office and not all the jobs are “music-friendly”. In general the findings say that a free and personal listening should be encourage.
Since school, music in a working environment has made always turn up someone’s nose. Today, though, thanks to different studies carried out by different academic institutions, as the british University of Sheffield and the Canadian University of Windsor from the 70s, this idea has made way to different considerations.
“The effects of the music over the mood and the motivan are indisputable”, Philip Vanhoutte, EMEA Managing Director di Plantronics, recently affirmed. “That is because music shares with life the concept of a ripetitive rhythm and has the same language of the thought”, the pianist Giulio Cassano, that will open the WOW! Concert of the 21st May, added.
Music, of course, has a wide spectrum of different kinds, and not all of these are suitable for working: classical and ambient electronica music, for its constant rhythmic patterns, along with video game music and natural soundscape are perfect for repetitive kind of jobs.
Music helps to lower the stress, evoking positive sensations and, as Teresa Lesiuk of the University of Windsor demonstrates, if the employees are free to listen to it “when they want as they want”, it helps to promote the happiness in the workplace.
The jobs the music have a better impact on are the ones where a good capacity of focusing is required, as computer designer, or creative or ripetitive ones, while it can have a negative effects on roles which have to deal with people, as directors, making managers or secretaries.
Lastly it is worths to underline that lyrics, high volume and excessive guitar riffs are detrimental, but a medium volume helps also to isolate himself from a noisy working environment.
Text by Gabriele Masi.
