The Role Of Light And Sound In Job Performance
Lights and Sound play a vital role during day-to-day job performance. There are strict rules impose by regulatory departments for the modern office environment. Most of them are covering the health and safety of workers, to protect them from hazardous situations. These hazards causing heat stress illness, respiratory, cardiovascular, and psychological problems to the workers both in and outside of the work place.
Light (Colour)
This element plays a significant role for the workers’ health and safety at the job location. Light permits employee to gather the information from its surrounding, and determine the size, shape, colour and movement. Appropriate light makes it stress-free for the employee to perform and can avoid accidents. Light environment and visual ergonomics are two main concepts that can be used to monitor the light condition at a workplace. Studies have shown that using coloured lights in a facility highly affects the degree of concentration, productivity, and performance of the respondants. When you enter a new space, colour is the first thing your eye notices. Colours have an intense subconscious impact on our performance, experiments have proven that better decision making, problem solving, critical thinking, higher concentration and faster memory can be a cause of being in a good emotional state.
Allen (2015) states that colours in the red spectrum have a negative effect on person as it increases blood pressure and energy, whereas colours in the blue spectrum are more calming to the eyes and brain and can lower heart rate. An experiment was made to see how people reacted to a blue and red room, the study showed that people left the red room faster than the blue room. This shows that different colours have an effect on the performance and the emotion of the person in the room. Research hows that green is the most comfortable colour to the eye, more facilities especially labs are using this colour to make it more comfortable for workers hence increasing the job performance. Further research shows that the colour of white lights can be distracting. A study was conducted where a team of proofreaders were given a task under a white light and again under a coloured light. the experiment concluded that people reform better when under coloured lights than a plain white light.
Sound (Pitch)
Working conditions must be in correct condition to protect workers from adverse effects of noise. Noise level should be limited to low intensity for industries and lighting should be improved at work place to prevent workers from getting physical, psychological, visual and hearing problems. Bohgard et.al. states that 'Noise can be defined as undesirable sound to which an individual is exposed. Differentiation between the desirable and undesirable sound depends upon various factors including time and duration, character of the sound and worth of the information containing in that sound'. In general, a good condition of lighting help employees to see objects and work they are doing clearly and quickly. The effect of a good lighting will increase employee productivity and reduce the problem and stress of eyes vision or eye sight to employees' work. However, lighting in the workplace is not always systematic, it will result on employees' outcomes and performance.
Another factor related to sound that may potentially affect job performance is the pitch of the sound. Higher pitch sounds are more damaging and irritating to the ear, therefore it can be more difficult to concentrate under that condition. This could potentially decrease the degree of performance of the person doing the job. Furthermore distance can be another factor of sound that can affect the job performance. The further away unwanted sounds are the lower the sound is the harder it is to hear it. The closer the unwanted sounds are the higher they are which could lead to a loss of concentration which could affect performance.
Refereences
- Allen, J. (2015, 29 April). Using color and light to improve workplace performance and productivity:How strategic selection of interior design color impacts creativity and focus. Retrieved from https://www.tradelineinc.com/reports/2015-4/using-color-and-light-improve-workplace-performance-and-productivity.
- Butt, M. S. (2012). Effects of physical environment factors on worker’s health in micro and small sized industries in Pakistan. (thesis). Retrieved from http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=3406379&fileOId=3407402
