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Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#101

Post by louprado »

logfromblammo wrote: post #84
louprado wrote: post #79

PSA of the day: With practice you can learn to delay your sneeze by a second or two. That gives you time exhale all the air from your lungs so the sneeze has minimal power[1]. Tilt your head down too and with further practice you can learn to open your throat in order to minimize air velocity. [1] Source: me, a former obnoxiously loud sneezer that always dismissed it as an unavoidable and comical physiological quirk…

I can sneeze without exhaling at all. Of course, I am afraid of what this does to my blood pressure, and whenever I do it, I start thinking that one day I'm going to burst a blood vessel while sneezing like that. Comes in handy if you have a photic sneeze reflex, though.

I definitely am not recommending holding in your sneeze. Exhale what air you can. When the sneeze comes, open your throat wide so to minimize the air velocity. It takes practice.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#102

Post by logfromblammo »

maxxxxx wrote: post #61
ElectronShak wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do they determine that people just take more sick days because they need some level of privacy Yeah, I too think this could explain it better. Say a work day is 8 hours, ideally, you cannot work on the same thing for 8 hours. But an open-plan office forces you to do this, or pretend to, because you are being "watched"...and this can be exhausting. A cellular office plan, gives you the privacy to relax, and maybe do…

"An open-office plan encourages collaboration" They always say that but from my observation this is simply not true.

An open plan office encourages lying to the employees about why you have an open plan office.

It's cheaper, and more of a panopticon for the floor-walky managers. It encourages the creation of a projected isolation shell, like some kind of psychic box turtle. Noise-cancelling headphones are essential to that effort.

When I actually collaborate, I am far more likely to do it if I can do it privately with a specific person, rather than with everyone who may be listening.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#103

Post by protonfish »

tcfunk wrote: post #85
louprado wrote: post #79

PSA of the day: With practice you can learn to delay your sneeze by a second or two. That gives you time exhale all the air from your lungs so the sneeze has minimal power[1]. Tilt your head down too and with further practice you can learn to open your throat in order to minimize air velocity. [1] Source: me, a former obnoxiously loud sneezer that always dismissed it as an unavoidable and comical physiological quirk…

Expecting that people should control their sneezes is a ridiculous cultural norm.

And what about saying "bless you?" People sure have superstitious hangups about sneezing. And I don't mind, it doesn't hurt anything, until I get a sarcastic "you're welcome" from people for not thanking them for blessing me. I seriously don't get that. When did saying "bless you" require an official display of gratitude? I didn't ask for anything and would just like to sneeze in peace, please.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#104

Post by protonfish »

nils-m-holm wrote: post #5

Noise, 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.)

I was just reading about a "Mars study" where 6 people were in close quarters for 8 months to examine the behavioral effects of a long-term space mission. https://www.apnews.com/bafab7eaf7be45d388f11ef81e7f15d8/Mars...

The article didn't say much about the results, other than:

> We’ve learned, for one thing, that conflict, even in the best of teams, is going to arise

I immediately though of my experience with open office plans.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#105

Post by wott »

bretpiatt wrote: post #56

Too many variables to isolate on this study to provide proof that correlation equals causation. Even with the isolating they've tried to do with the 95% CI the range is: 1 Person Office: 1 (They didn't report a range here) 2 Person Office: 1.13-1.98 sick days 3-6 Person Office: 1.08-1.73 sick days (LOWER than 2) 6+ Person Office: 1.30-2.02 sick days Great item to study further. This isn't scientific proof of anything…

There is a perfect positive correlation between smoking + alcohol consumption and health!

1 person: heavy smokers 15%, drinkers 16%

3-6 pers: heavy smokers 13%, drinkers 16%, sick leave +36%

2 pers: heavy smokers 10%, drinkers 15%, sick leave +50%

> 6 pers: heavy smokers 9%, drinkers 13%, sick leave +62%

Please drink and smoke more to fight sickness.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#106

Post by jackhack »

tcfunk wrote: post #85
louprado wrote: post #79

PSA of the day: With practice you can learn to delay your sneeze by a second or two. That gives you time exhale all the air from your lungs so the sneeze has minimal power[1]. Tilt your head down too and with further practice you can learn to open your throat in order to minimize air velocity. [1] Source: me, a former obnoxiously loud sneezer that always dismissed it as an unavoidable and comical physiological quirk…

Expecting that people should control their sneezes is a ridiculous cultural norm.

Expecting sick people to not fill a room with hundreds of millions of aerosolized particles when that could be clearly avoided is a result of simple respect for those around you and evidence of manners and good breeding.

Cover your sneeze. Cover your cough. Stay home when sick. These are kindergarten-level cultural learnings.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#107

Post by vvesperr »

scbrg wrote: post #24
skj wrote: post #2

The 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.

Where are you from? I'm guessing that how you interpret the title might depend on your native language/dialect. Judging by the names of the authors, I'm guessing they're mostly Danish, or at least Scandinavian. As a native speaker of another Scandinavian language (Swedish), I understood the title as it was intended, but I'm not sure if the phrase "sickness absence" is the best way of expressing "absence due to sickne…

I'm American and I understood "sickness absence" as the intended "sick leave" or "absence DUE TO sickness" but it did take me a second.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#108

Post by the_af »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #82
louprado wrote: post #79

PSA of the day: With practice you can learn to delay your sneeze by a second or two. That gives you time exhale all the air from your lungs so the sneeze has minimal power[1]. Tilt your head down too and with further practice you can learn to open your throat in order to minimize air velocity. [1] Source: me, a former obnoxiously loud sneezer that always dismissed it as an unavoidable and comical physiological quirk…

This is the first time it's occurred to me that other people cannot control their sneezes. I've had the occasional "where the hell did that come from?" sneeze, but they're a rare exception, maybe a few times a year. I cannot fathom not being able to control something like a sneeze; to me, it would feel like not being able to control farting, coughing or talking.

When my alergies strike (hello, Spring!) I often cannot control my sneezes. I can control not sneezing in people's faces, though. I also sometimes cannot control my coughs. Farting, fortunately, I can control :)

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#109

Post by rbadaro »

logfromblammo wrote: post #91
zebraflask wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This fits with my experience. My department has some cubicle farms and some shared but much more private office suites. The cube farm people are always getting sick. Somebody comes in with a cough and promptly spreads it. It then can take weeks before there's a week without somebody sick. Getting people to stay home when they are sick has been harder to implement than you'd think. I've tried with my work team. A numb…

Ever since companies ditched vacation and sick leave in favor of combined PTO, I work while sick. When I had sick leave, I used it. It may well be that they don't want to cut their July vacation short by a day because they caught a cold in January. And to compound the issue, it was probably a cold they caught at work, because the company leave policy reinforces the behavior. People who stay home when sick are punishe…

That is very US specific. In Europe, in a lot of office-based work if you get sick you take some days off and it doesn't impact your normal yearly 20-30 day vacation allowance. If you need more than X days (in my case 5), you need a paper from your doctor, otherwise you self declare as sick. At my workplace, people tend to work from home if they are just feeling a bit sick.

Re: Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)

#110

Post by Robotbeat »

tcfunk wrote: post #85
louprado wrote: post #79

PSA of the day: With practice you can learn to delay your sneeze by a second or two. That gives you time exhale all the air from your lungs so the sneeze has minimal power[1]. Tilt your head down too and with further practice you can learn to open your throat in order to minimize air velocity. [1] Source: me, a former obnoxiously loud sneezer that always dismissed it as an unavoidable and comical physiological quirk…

Expecting that people should control their sneezes is a ridiculous cultural norm.

Really? It seems like pretty much the most justified cultural norm I can imagine. Stopping/slowing the spread of disease is one of the only good reasons to even have cultural norms.
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