I much prefer just music. The spoken word on a radio can be quite distracting but music can be either "wall paper" or a stimulator. Two examples from a plant assembling HGVs and commercial vans : In one area the "heavy gang", beards, tats, piercings, were mating van engines to the front axle assembly. At the side of the line a CD was playing classical music. But classical music with MUSCLE. A disc called Ram Dam with music such as the 1812, Hall of the mountain king, Night on a bare mountain, Beethoven's Fifth... They all moved to the rhythm of the music which, I'm sure, helped to coordinate their team work. In another area they were making wiring looms for the HGVs. 400 women and only two male supervisors. The ladies wiring up the looms worked at boards the length of a vehicle and danced from one end of the board to the other to the sound of light music. Counter example : In a Dutch factory making extruded tube and glass fibre pipes the radio was turned up so loud that they had to wear hearing protection. Daft but true. (Thank you O Mighty spell checker, I'd just typed "herring protection") Bring back "Music while you work" a wartime initiative said to have boosted production Merv

We banned the use of radios within our manufacturing plant. It is a Noise protection zone. The radios we turned up to overcome the background machinery noise. By banning radios we effectiviley reduced the noise by a factor of 50%. At a distribution warehouse we have we set the volume control & station being listened to at a central location and balloted the staff to decide which Radio station was to be listened to throughout the day. Geoff

Some good advice given here, but what I would be looking to firstly establish is what are the current noise levels experienced by the employees in the work environment and is this noise negatively impacting on them. I would also look to see if having music creates other hazards in the workplace e.g. makes communication difficult due to excess noise levels, cannot hear vital announcements, fire alarm etc. and if there has been any complaints of hearing loss/problems. After considering these factors (among many other factors, such as those you mention) and armed with the answers you can then consider the influence of music (both positive and negative) on a workforce and provide your local manager with a comprehensive report. The facts you obtain will also support any action that is decided on (if any) and will be for the wellbeing of all/the majority of the workforce thus ensuring a positive and proactive approach to this issue.

Steve Several decades ago in the Soviet Union, a manufacturing plant found that turning on some music temporarily improved productivity, but that after an hour or so, this fell back to the level when there had been no music. So they moved towards switching the music on and off at intervals, thence getting overall increase in productivity when the music was on.

I was speaking to one of my ex colleagues today for the first time in years and by coincidence he was the guy who put in our induction loop ear defender system. 3 channels were available these were decided on by a vote from the shifts. The user had a micro switch on the defender cup to select the channel. Emergency break in and tannoy break in meant alarms were heard. Plus volume control pot which had a set safe maximum. By Peltor if I recall. Staff loved them

When I worked on the tools (many moons ago) we always had the radio on in the background. I think it's sad that today a radio is often seen as a hindrance by some... It has been touched on a previous response but worth mentioning that officially if you have a radio on in the workplace you are required to obtain a PPL licence - sad but true. Beware that there are people who check by making a phone call and say something to the effect "is that a radio playing in the background"? If the unsuspecting persons say "yes" - Bingo! A £500 invoice will be dropping through your door shortly.

In my last place of work when I arrived, we had several hearing protection zones in which the radio was turned up beyond 87bD(A) in order that they could hear it. Then adjacent departments would turn theirs up to drown out the others and so we had a nuclear arms race of noise. I soon put a stop to this, and was a very bad man for a while. "Watch out for those killer radios," they joked. But then a claim for NIHL arrived from an old employee that was not well regarded by the vast majority of employees, and then everyone immediately bought into the idea as to why I banned it. Needless to say, it was a very strange place, to put it mildly. Some people like it and they tell me that it makes the day go quicker for them in a repetitive job. Others will moan about what's on and you can never find a happy medium. As others have said, there is no real evidence that productivity improves if you have it on, and I would tend to believe the Soviet study myself. It would boost up for a while and then go back to normal. As an aside, I just don't get the cult of the DJ on the radio. I'm a massive music fan (rock, prog, classical and jazz - so a pretty eclectic mix) and if they relied on me for a living, they'd starve!