This article was originally published in Work Design Magazine.
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We connected with Moodsonic, winners in the Return to Office category of the 2022 Next Work Environment Competition, to see where their project has taken them!
Moodsonic worked with Elevance Health to implement a sensory, experiential return to office strategy. Aimed at the pervasive problem of sound in the workplace, the project gave employees control to offer quality experiences that surpass work from home.
After WFH, employees realized the distracting nature of sound when it comes to productivity and creativity. Moodsonic fitted Elevance’s fourteen-story Atlanta workplace with inviting sensory experiences to improve wellbeing and performance.
Moodsonic: The Atlanta office was Moodsonic and Elevance Health’s very first soundscaping collaboration. We’ve made great process since then! Thanks to the success of this project, we’ve continued to work together closely. Moodsonic’s soundscapes have been now deployed in Elevance offices across the United States, including sites in New York, Chicago, and Nashville, as Elevance continues to make strides in providing best-in-class workplaces for its people.
These workplaces have become a benchmark for using soundscapes to create experiences that offer something different to people’s work-from-home environments.
It’s been an exciting year at Moodsonic central too. We’ve expanded our team, with new hires in London and California geared around engineering and product development.
Moodsonic: At the moment, one focus for us is responsive soundscapes. The role of workplace is changing faster than ever, so it’s important that our technology is flexible and intelligent. It’s particularly exciting to develop and experience these soundscapes, which can adapt their characteristics in real-time in response to changing office environments. It really feels like another level in terms of sensory workplace experience.
We’ve added millions of square feet of real-estate to our installation portfolio too. These new projects have been a valuable opportunity to learn about people’s day-to-day workplace experiences. We’ve created a platform which collects feedback at scale from these offices and helps us fine-tune our soundscape content. And we’ve worked with some of these new clients to carry out research studies in-situ.
One piece of client research, which hundreds of employees from a Californian tech company took part in, found some remarkable results from our workplace soundscaping: improved cognitive functioning (+30%), collaboration (+19%), mood and sense of place! It’s another validation of the importance of sound in workplaces and the benefits of approaching workplace design from a sensory, biophilic perspective.
We’re hugely grateful for the exposure that Work Design Magazine’s Next Environment awards gave us last year, which has helped us take these steps forward. Noise is still a huge issue in workplaces. According to Leesman’s latest research, noise is “the biggest issue for any employer looking to pull workers back into the office.” So, we still have a lot more work ahead of us. But we’re excited to continue embracing the challenge and use sound as a positive tool for workplace design.
