Radio listening in the workplace is now very widespread, and accounts for more than a sixth of all listening hours. There are many factors behind this increase - managers’ more liberal view of workplace listening, the wide availability of radio, the move to home-working, etc.

However the single most important reason for radio’s popularity in the workplace is that it is an auxiliary medium, and can be consumed without unduly distracting attention from work tasks. Other media are consumed at work - for example, two-thirds of workers will look at a newspaper at some point in the working day - but radio is the one which dominates workplace media because of its complementary nature.

As the graph shows, workplace listening is biased to male, younger and downscale groups, but there is still plenty of workplace listening going on in the other groups. Workplace listeners are disproportionately likely to choose Commercial Radio stations rather than BBC (mainly because the UK workforce is younger than total population, while BBC services are popular with the over-55s).

Functional needs, such as weather or travel news, are cited as the main reason by some workplace listeners, but listening is much more likely to be motivated by emotional needs, such as raising the spirits or relieving boredom.

In this respect, radio usage in the workplace is similar to usage at home or in the car. However, workplace listening is much less likely to be solitary, for obvious reasons - over a third of all working people listen in groups of ten or more, and this pattern is seen across all demographic groups.

Roles for using radio in the workplace

Here are some examples of how advertising to people in the workplace offers benefits:

• advertising near the time of personal decisions (e.g. to buy lunch)
• advertising near the time of work decisions (e.g. to change delivery company)
• ensuring your own staff hear the latest advertising campaign repeatedly

"We listen to radio … to keep from being depressed or isolated, to feel connected to something, to enfold ourselves in its envelope of pleasure, information, power"  Jody Berland, "Contradicting media",  Radiotext(e), quoted in Shingler & Wieringa, On Air: Methods and meanings of radio

Click here to read the RAB guide to radio listening in the workplace