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Do you have a citation for "there's a lot of evidence suggesting that almost everyone (over 90%) will develop work-related health problems"? I mean, come on, o

Do you have a citation for "there's a lot of evidence suggesting that almost everyone (over 90%) will develop work-related health problems"? I mean, come on, over 90%? If the evidence was that clear then you would, for example, expect some worker-friendly country like France or Sweden to have banned or regulated open plan offices. As far as I know, they haven't. I don't doubt open plan is unpleasant; nor that it can cause health problems; and I accept that the rise in health problems may be hard to measure because most companies moved to open plan. However, what you said about >90% health problems and 10-15 year worker lifetimes oversells and undermines what are otherwise very good points.

michaelochurch 14y ago
If the evidence was that clear then you would, for example, expect some worker-friendly country like France or Sweden to have banned or regulated open plan offices. As far as I know, they haven't. The problem is that an open-plan ban is not appropriate for all work environments. One example would be a hospital. If you can't handle the stress of an operating room (and many people can't) then you shouldn't be a surgeon. The job has intrinsic stress, and that's a factor in the compensation. That's the fundamental problem with regulation and government intervention: it's hard to get the special cases right. An open-plan ban would be a good thing for the vast majority of white-collar office workers, but it clearly can't be applied to all work environments (medicine, military). If I recall correctly, many countries do have lower limits on personal working space, usually in the neighborhood of 10 m^2. It'd be hard to enact a blanket open-plan ban because the concept isn't well-defined, but work space regulations are already in place. An additional factor that is hard to regulate: the health load of an open-plan office seems to be a function of the person's age, position in the hierarchy, and the amount of personal space. Open-plan wouldn't be so bad if people had the recommended 200 SF (18.6 m^2) with barriers at their backs. At the typical 50 SF, with the person visible from behind and prone to managerial harassment, it's a catastrophe. However, what you said about >90% health problems and 10-15 year worker lifetimes oversells and undermines what are otherwise very good points. Perhaps 90% is high, but the going assumption people make when designing office spaces is that the typical open plan office (< 100 SF, open-back visibility) will increase attrition by about 10% per year for younger people and 20% for older people. How much of this one wishes to attribute to health issues, and how much to less serious garden-variety unhappiness, is somewhat of an open question.

michaelochurch 14y ago

If the evidence was that clear then you would, for example, expect some worker-friendly country like France or Sweden to have banned or regulated open plan offices. As far as I know, they haven't. The problem is that an open-plan ban is not appropriate for all work environments. One example would be a hospital. If you can't handle the stress of an operating room (and many people can't) then you shouldn't be a surgeon. The job has intrinsic stress, and that's a factor in the compensation. That's the fundamental problem with regulation and government intervention: it's hard to get the special cases right. An open-plan ban would be a good thing for the vast majority of white-collar office workers, but it clearly can't be applied to all work environments (medicine, military). If I recall correctly, many countries do have lower limits on personal working space, usually in the neighborhood of 10 m^2. It'd be hard to enact a blanket open-plan ban because the concept isn't well-defined, but work space regulations are already in place. An additional factor that is hard to regulate: the health load of an open-plan office seems to be a function of the person's age, position in the hierarchy, and the amount of personal space. Open-plan wouldn't be so bad if people had the recommended 200 SF (18.6 m^2) with barriers at their backs. At the typical 50 SF, with the person visible from behind and prone to managerial harassment, it's a catastrophe. However, what you said about >90% health problems and 10-15 year worker lifetimes oversells and undermines what are otherwise very good points. Perhaps 90% is high, but the going assumption people make when designing office spaces is that the typical open plan office (< 100 SF, open-back visibility) will increase attrition by about 10% per year for younger people and 20% for older people. How much of this one wishes to attribute to health issues, and how much to less serious garden-variety unhappiness, is somewhat of an open question.