Can you use dictation in an open-plan office?

Yes. Dictation works in an open-plan office, but the room affects two things: how well the software hears you, and how much you disturb the people around you. Deal with both before you dictate in shared space.

Background noise lowers recognition accuracy, so the room matters

Speech recognition accuracy depends on factors such as speech fidelity, ambient noise and microphone quality, according to a 2017 paper on automatic speech recognition in conversation ¹. A 1996 study found that the performance of a speech recognition system degrades rapidly in the presence of ambient noise ². That study is old and used a small vocabulary, so take it as the direction of the effect, not as a current error rate. Neither source tells you how much an open office costs in accuracy. Your own test does: dictate the same paragraph at your desk and in a quiet room, then count the corrections in each.

A headset microphone is the first fix to try

Apple advises that a headset microphone may help when Dictation is used in a noisy environment or a room with excessive echo ³. Apple gives no accuracy figures for this, so treat it as a setup to test, not a promise. A microphone built to filter ambient noise is the other option, and our glossary entry on noise-canceling microphones explains how those work. For the buying side, see the guide to dictation microphones.

Nearby speech distracts the people around you

Open offices are distracting in general. In a 2005 field study, 99 percent of the employees surveyed said their concentration was impaired by components of office noise, especially ringing phones and background conversation ⁴. The authors found no evidence that people get used to those sounds ⁵. In a 2019 laboratory study of 55 people, how intelligible background speech was had a significant effect on performance, mental load and discomfort ⁶. The authors write that it seems accepted that speech noise is the main source of discomfort in open-plan offices ⁷.

None of these studies tests dictation. Read them as evidence that a colleague's voice is a real cost to the people nearby, not as a measure of how much dictation disturbs them.

What to do in a shared room

1. Test the room first. Dictate the same paragraph at your desk and in a quiet room, then compare the corrections.
2. Use a headset for long dictation at your desk, and check the setup with a short test.
3. Move long sessions to a meeting room or a private desk. Keep short replies for quieter moments.
4. Agree a rule with your team, such as dictation blocks at set times, so colleagues know when to expect speech.

The trade-off is real. A room quiet enough for accurate dictation may be hard to book, and if it is, the time you would save on writing can go to finding one. Our guide on how much time dictation saves at work shows how to put a value on that trade.

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