XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: greed@barackobama.com   
      
   Open plan offices may look cool, but in reality workers report   
   suffering from a lack of privacy, too much noise and, a new   
   study finds, are more prone to catch the flu. Josephine Fairley   
   reports on the downfall of the open plan office   
      
   I’ve always rather liked that vintage wartime poster ‘Coughs &   
   sneezes spread diseases’ – but now it seems as if there probably   
   ought to be one pinned up on the wall of every office. Um, if   
   you can find a wall to pin it to, that is. According to a new   
   study, it’s not being rammed up against fellow commuters on the   
   journey to work that spreads contagious everyday diseases: the   
   real culprit is the fashionably airy design of many offices,   
   which helps viruses to travel swiftly through a workforce –   
   therefore impacting on productivity and well-being.   
      
   I’ve never been a massive fan of the open plan office myself   
   (only ever worked in a couple, and found it scarily easy to be   
   distracted by the open tin of Cadbury’s Celebrations on a   
   colleague’s desk, or the conversation that I could semi-hear my   
   boss having. And then there was the colleague who liked to   
   return from a languid – and often liquid – lunch and play   
   plaintive Scottish tunes on her recorder while sitting under her   
   desk. But that’s another story …) As a result, and perhaps   
   unsurprisingly in the circumstances, most of my best work was   
   done in the hours before my colleagues arrived and the time   
   after they left, which made for an unhealthily long day.   
      
   Well, the study in Ergonomics – from four Stockholm scientists   
   with straight-out-of-Wallender names – looked at the ways in   
   which the different layouts of offices is related to sick leave   
   days taken. They researched many different configurations. The   
   single-room office (always my preference, for sheer, blinkered   
   productivity). A shared-room office (two or three workers). And   
   the various types of open plan offices: from small (four to nine   
   workers) through to large (more than 24), the ‘combi-office’   
   (with less than 20 per cent of the workforce not at individual   
   workstations, but working in teams) – and the ‘flexi-office’ (no   
   individual workspaces at all). Funnily enough, I was in one of   
   the latter just yesterday, belonging to a household name brand;   
   even the CEO is just hot-desking it, now.   
      
   And what were Stockholm survey’s findings? For female workers,   
   the worst offenders – in terms of sick days – were the three   
   sizes of open plan offices. If you’ve ever seen one of those   
   films of a ‘sneeze’ in which germs are seen to travel   
   extraordinarily long distances, it’s entirely obvious why that   
   would be the case.   
      
   For men, flexi-offices – with no individual workstations, though   
   some shared meeting rooms – were most likely to result in days   
   taken off, presumably for ‘flu, colds and the dreaded Norovirus   
   which is the viral equivalent of an Australian bushfire, felling   
   workers as it beats a path through an office or retail   
   environment and leaving devastation in its wake.   
      
   According to the Scandinavian researchers, however, it isn’t   
   only the ability of germs to travel through open-plan air which   
   impacts on health. It’s the other factors, which I certainly   
   always found difficult to deal with.   
      
   – Background noise (‘irrelevant sound’, as the researchers call   
   it): it can be stressfully hard to string a sentence together or   
   review a column of figures in monastic silence, let alone amid a   
   cacophony of conversations.   
      
   – Lack of visual privacy is another; it is a biological fact   
   that whenever you’re in a ‘crowd’ or public setting, the body’s   
   fight-or-flight mechanism is on permanent standby, even if   
   you’re completely unaware of it impacting on your adrenal glands   
   (and the knock-on effect on the immune system).   
      
   – Reduced ability to control personal space is another issue;   
   I’m all for making an office home-from-home as a way to enhance   
   its comfort factor, with aphorisms, flowers, family photos,   
   personal stationery items – working on the basis that I spend   
   way more waking hours at the office than I do in my own home, so   
   why not make it nice? But in a flexi office, you’re always a   
   nomad – so those reassuring items must necessarily go, depriving   
   you of that sense of feeling ‘at home’.   
      
   The findings, then, seem entirely logical to me. So with   
   absenteeism such a challenge for employers (do you just employ   
   an extra person in a role at all times, to cover for sickness?),   
   perhaps it’s time to return to the old-fashioned model, put back   
   some of those dividing walls, allowing workers peace and quiet,   
   a door to guard against ‘flu epidemics – and somewhere to Blu-   
   Tack that photo of the cat.   
      
   Architects, office designers and CEOs of multinationals affected   
   by thousands of sniffling workers, over to you.   
      
   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/10665747/Open-   
   plan-offices-suck.-Why-people-are-finally-waking-up-to-it.html   
      
       
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)