Open Plan offices suck
2021-03-24 16:16:44.437563+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Open plan offices result in more lost days to sickness: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices--a national cross sectional questionnaire survey PMID: 21528171 DOI: 10.5271/sjweh.3167
Results: Sickness absence was significantly related to having a greater number of occupants in the office (P<0.001) when adjusting for confounders. Compared to cellular offices, occupants in 2-person offices had 50% more days of sickness absence [rate ratio (RR) 1.50, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.13-1.98], occupants in 3-6-person offices had 36% more days of sickness absence (RR 1.36, 95% CI 1.08-1.73), and occupants in open-plan offices (>6 persons) had 62% more days of sickness absence (RR 1.62, 95% CI 1.30-2.02).
And less interaction: Bernstein ES, Turban S. 2018 The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 373: 20170239. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239
Although OpenCo1’s primary purpose in opening up thespace had been to increase F2F interactions, the 52 participantsnow spent 72%lesstime interacting F2F. Prior to the redesign,they accumulated 5266 min of interaction over 15 days, orroughly 5.8 h of F2F interaction per person per day. After theredesign, those same people accumulated only 1492 min ofinteraction over 15 days, or roughly 1.7 h per person per day.