Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
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Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
#2The title makes it seem (to me) like they're finding that open plan offices reduce sickness.
But they're not reporting on the absence of sickness, but rather absence due to sickness, which they found occurred at a higher rate in open offices.
Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
#3The title makes it seem (to me) like they're finding that open plan offices reduce sickness. But they're not reporting on the absence of sickness, but rather absence due to sickness, which they found occurred at a higher rate in open offices.
The latter is how I understood it.
Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
#4(2011) - have there been any further studies or attempts at replication?
Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
#5Noise, permanent distraction, regular interruption, no privacy, and people spreading germs all over the place. No wonder that people get sick! I would rather be poor than work in a shared office one more time. (I have experienced both, so I know what I'm talking about.)
Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
#6Do they determine that people just take more sick days because they need some level of privacy while they work or because they are actually are getting sick more often? I would think its the former, tbh
Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
#7I am curious if sickness increase is caused by mental aspects of sharing the office or the transmittable diseases factor. Authors didn't get into these details the from what I see by briefly looking at the whole paper.
Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
#8Three plausible reasons off the top of my head on why open offices would experience less reported sick days.
One: the same reason as experienced by garbage men or sewer guys; greater exposure causing improved immune systems.
Two: being in an open office increases the top-down butts-in-seat observability, causing employees to come into the office even while sick to keep up a better work image.
Three: (what happens at my work) perhaps the work places that can support an open office can also support working from home and so instead of sick days being days off, employees just work from home with minor ailments, reducing the number of reported sick days. At least for me, if I have a slight cold, I'm still up for a mostly productive day, but I don't want to spread a cold to others in the office. So I work from home.
Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
#9Do they determine that people just take more sick days because they need some level of privacy while they work or because they are actually are getting sick more often? I would think its the former, tbh
I know it's a stretch, but the former could be analyzed in terms of sickness.
Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
#10Table 2: median days of sickness in single person offices in last year: 1.0. Median days of sickness in 6+ person offices: 2.0. Respective means are 4.9 and 8.1.