When It Comes to Workplace Noise, Millennials Can't Even

Companies go out of their way to woo workers with freebies and quirky spaces. Coffee and snacks are somewhat standard. Other businesses go bigger, with neon-orange slides that wind between floors or treehouses and ponds on sprawling campuses. But a new survey asks whether those accommodations are really what workers are after. What if the key to workplace contentment and productivity isn’t more stuff—sleeker desks, a cornucopia of food to fight over—but more quiet?

Oxford Economics, an analysis firm spun out of Oxford University’s business college, reached out to more than 1,200 executives and non-senior employees across industries, including healthcare, retail, manufacturing, financial services, and the government sector. The majority of the respondents (74 percent) reported that they worked in open-plan offices. A handful had private offices, and the rest split their days between home offices, travel, co-working spaces, or a combination of the three. About half of the respondents were Millennials.