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Do 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 mor
by nautilus12 9y ago
Do 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
- a3n 9y agoI know it's a stretch, but the former could be analyzed in terms of sickness.
- tolien 9y agoThe paper actually refers to analysis of how background noise raises stress levels (with the resulting effect on absence) so it’s not so big a stretch.
- sanxiyn 9y agoOffice design's impact on sick leave rates (2014) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24460745 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24460745 investigated this question. "Sick leaves were self-reported ... as number of short and long (medically certified) sick leaves... A significant excess risk for sickness absence was found only in terms of short sick leaves." Which supports your hypothesis.
- sidlls 9y agoHow does that support the hypothesis? One might conclude that the non-open plans mitigate the spread of short term sickness (e.g. colds) instead.
- sanxiyn 9y agoSupport, not definite evidence. It could be that both short and long sick leaves are affected. Compared to that, it supports "not actually getting sick more often".
- sidlls 9y agoIt isn't clear to me how that is supported. Are you saying rates of short-term and long-term sickness ought to have the same correlation with office layout? Why?
- wyager 9y agoLong sick leaves are usually for serious stuff that's non-transmissible, whereas short sick leave is usually for exactly the kind of stuff that's easier to transmit in an open office.
- adrianN 9y agoMost infections clear themselves up after a couple of days.
- ElectronShak 9y ago> 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 something else, then say when you feel refreshed, you get back to working. An open-office plan encourages collaboration, but that's based on the assumption that we all work the same way.
- maxxxxx 9y ago"An open-office plan encourages collaboration" They always say that but from my observation this is simply not true.
- damontal 9y ago2nd day in our new open office and I'm trying to work while 2 guys are having a catch with a football over my head.
- maccard 9y agoDo you think if you shared a 3 person office with those 2 guys that problem would go away?
- logfromblammo 9y ago
- tyingq 9y agoCould also be politeness. Maybe I feel okay about sneezing a lot in my own cube, but not on other people. So I take sick days I might not have if I were more isolated.
- gruturo 9y agoIndeed this may even help understand why the case of exactly 2 people in an office results in higher absences (50%) than the 3-6 case (36%): You develop a more personal relation with that other person and they're usually not too much of an annoyance, so out of respect for them you stay home when sick. When you are in a more crowded office this mechanism doesn't kick in because, frankly, you likely hate them at least a bit, and that would explain the lower %. Finally when packed in a chicken farm scenario, all these mechanisms go out of the window and the sheer amount of germs, noise, distraction and stress you're exposed to trumps every other factor, hence the highest reported (62%) value.
- hannob 9y ago> Do 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? That's not an either-or question. It could very plausibly be both. More people in a room means more potential for infections.