Around 4 out of 10 Norwegians work in an office. And more and more people are sitting in some form of open office landscape. Some are given headphones. Others get sound-absorbing walls that are screwed to the desk or hang from the ceiling. What they have in common is that they have no walls around them and a door that can be closed. But how good is it for health? – An open office landscape with fixed space is associated with a higher probability of self-reported sickness absence compared to those who sit in a private office, says researcher Randi Hovden Borge. She works as a researcher at the Norwegian Working Environment Institute (STAMI). Sickness and social security After they had checked and adjusted for age, gender and education level, there was a 20 per cent difference in how likely it was that people had self-reported sickness absence from the office landscape and the single office. Randi Hovden Borge is researching the hill people have in the office. Photo: Norwegian Institute of Working Environment In the past, her colleagues have found that the risk of being called in sick by the doctor, and disability benefits, also increases when the walls in the office are gone. – Does it mean that people are called in sick more often when they are sitting in an open office landscape? – Yes, that is what our study suggests, and that is what a lot of other international research points in the direction of. Concentration Unni Soltun Andreassen, a research fellow at NTNU in Trondheim, has spent the last three years in an open office landscape. She thinks it has worked badly. – I sit and concentrate on things that may be difficult to understand. I will sit and develop my own thoughts about my data material. She also thinks that it is difficult not to look up when someone walks by, is talking to others in the office or is cleaning the dishwasher. – You feel a bit like a meerkat, even if you want to concentrate. An office worker looks up over the partition. Photo: Martin Meissner / Ap The advantages that disappeared You might think that there must be some advantages to open landscape as there are more and more of them. But Hovden Borge has not actually found it in the research. – If you look at outcomes linked to health and the working environment, open office environments are mostly linked to less favorable outcomes compared to single offices. You also don’t get in better contact with your colleagues, even if some people think so. – There is a lot of research that actually suggests the opposite, says Hovden Borge. Open office landscapes are nothing new. Here men and women sit and work at Creditreform in Trondheim in 1938. Photo: Schrøder / Sverresborg Trøndelag Folkemuseum Less socially According to a study where two large companies moved their employees from their own offices to open countryside, face-to-face communication was cut by 70 percent. Instead, more of the communication became digital. – It is perhaps not when you are sitting in a large open room that you most want to have the good conversations. You can be afraid of disturbing others too, says the researcher. NTNU scholarship holder Soltun Andreassen has also experienced this in the open landscape where she has had a place. – Cooperation and socialization have never been worse than after we came here. Because you can’t talk to anyone in a landscape when you know that others are sitting and working on concentration work. A little further down the hall, she has recently moved into a group office together with a colleague. – I think that if people had had a proper office space to come to, they would have come to work to a greater extent. The days of single offices are over – Many mistakes can be made with open office solutions. We have terrible examples where they can have, for example, 20–40 desks in the same zone, in the same room, says architectural psychologist Oddvar Skjæveland. He believes there are many things that can make new offices at least as good as people sitting separately in their own office. Oddvar Skjæveland, who has a PhD in architectural psychology, believes there are good ways to make better use of space in modern offices. Photo: Johanne Karlsrud Firstly, there must be a good number of cell offices, but they must be used for sharing. Those who need a permanent office due to their health must get it. And the indoor climate and acoustics must be good. Skjæveland believes that the era of one-person offices is over, partly because so many people are in home offices. To find out how many people use their desks, his company has counted the number of employees in place in both private and public enterprises. – Only half are present in the office at the same time. Then it becomes a terrible waste to keep so many empty offices at all times. In addition, he says that it is good for nature that such large areas are not built down just to make room for extra offices. A cozy office at Aker Brygge in 2007. Photo: Lise Åserud / SCANPIX Home office is not the answer But even if people get sick more often in an open office landscape, it does not necessarily help that they can work from home. – Based on our study, we can say that home offices at least do not lead to lower sickness absence among those who sit in an open office landscape compared to single offices, says Randi Hovden Borge. She says that it indicates that you have to deal with the problems that exist at work instead of hoping that people will be fine in the home office. – In any case, it suggests that working from home should not be seen as some kind of “quick fix”. Unfortunately, the researcher has no solution for the hill the open office landscape can be better for those who will work there. – No, you actually know very little about that. An open office landscape at Stavanger municipality. Photo: Ole Andreas Bø / news Can close the door Hovden Borge himself sits alone in his own office. She has a door she can close when she needs to. – I am very happy with it. I almost never have a home office either. – If you need to work under cover, you can close the door, or you can choose to leave it open. In an open office landscape, you don’t have that option. But when more and more people are moving away from sole proprietorships, she has some advice. – We do not want to implement office solutions that affect employees’ health, productivity and well-being. Therefore, I think it is important to take the working environment perspective with you.
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More patients report sick in open office environments than in their own office – news Viten – News in science and research
