NOISE EXPOSURE AND ACOUSTIC COMFORT IN CALL CENTRES

Call centres are big employers worldwide and in Brazil they generate around 1.4 million jobs for call centre operators. According to the Brazilian association of call centres (ABT) this number is increasing at a rate of 10% per year. The majority of employees are young people in their first job or retired pensioners looking for an additional source of income. Call centre companies need to comply with the relevant Brazilian regulations, such as Appendix 2 of NR-17 - Ergonomics, which provides the minimum specifications for these environments and Appendix 1 of NR-15 which establishes the limits for noise exposure in work environments. Therefore, the noise to which employees are exposed and the acoustic comfort of the work environments need to be measured. This paper reports 166 measurements of the noise levels to which telemarketing employees are exposed, collected from various call centres in Brazil, mainly located in the southern region, between the years of 2012 and 2013. The results are discussed with regard to the noise exposure for each employee and the background noise in the work environment.