Shared And Open-Plan Office Spaces Spread Disease

There’s been a trend for offices to be more “shared” and “open-plan” (academic laboratories at some institutions follow this model as well).  There’s probably some sort of underlying social and political motivation in this (“collective team-building” and “cooperation” – although for some strange reason administration keep their own private offices, with Deans having their own private bathrooms), as well as "cost-cutting" financial reasons, but the overall experience for workers seems to be negative. Now, we see that such “open-plan” spaces are hotbeds of disease transmission, as anyone could have expected.  Abstract:

OBJECTIVE:

The aim of this study was to examine whether shared and open-plan offices are associated with more days of sickness absence than cellular offices.

METHODS:

The analysis was based on a national survey of Danish inhabitants between 18-59 years of age (response rate 62%), and the study population consisted of the 2403 employees that reported working in offices. The different types of offices were characterized according to self-reported number of occupants in the space. The log-linear Poisson model was used to model the number of self-reported sickness absence days depending on the type of office; the analysis was adjusted for age, gender, socioeconomic status, body mass index, alcohol consumption, smoking habits, and physical activity during leisure time.

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).

CONCLUSION:

Occupants sharing an office and occupants in open-plan offices (>6 occupants) had significantly more days of sickness absence than occupants in cellular offices.