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Workers in open-plan offices are more active and less stressed than those with desks in cubicles or private offices, research suggests. This could be because they make the effort to find privacy to talk away from their desk, the researchers said. The US study used chest sensors to track movement and heart rate in hundreds of people in different buildings over three days.
The potential health benefits should not be ignored, they said.
But they said the study was observational only and factors like location of stairs and lifts could be at play too.
The University of Arizona study, published in Occupational & Environmental Medicine, claims to be the first to measure activity and stress in office workers, rather than asking them in a survey.
It said office workers tended to be a sedentary group compared to other workers, making them more likely to have health issues, including heart problems, tiredness and low mood.
Being less active during working hours has also been linked to greater feelings of stress. In the study of 231 office workers in government buildings in the US, those in open-plan offices - with no partitions between desks - clocked up 32% more physical activity than workers in private offices and 20% more than those in cubicles.
And those who were more active had 14% lower levels of stress outside the office compared to those who were less active.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45247799
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday August 21 2018, @03:33PM (17 children)
I am one of the unfortunate people stuck in an office with a window and a door that closes.
Open Plan offices are [inc.com] such a [inc.com] great [chicagotribune.com] idea [entrepreneur.com]!
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 21 2018, @03:56PM (15 children)
I'm nowadays in a home office, which is even better, but in all my years in working for other people, by far the best environment was when I had my own office, with actual walls and a door. Even though that office was a space I'd spent a bit of my time converting from a storage closet. Next-best was high-walled cubicles with a fair amount of privacy. The open-plan companies I worked for were my least-productive, and more an indication of management being too cheap to spend money on their employee's work environment than they were reflective of somebody thinking it through.
The real reasons for open-plan offices are:
1. They're cheaper to set up than cubes or offices with walls and a door.
2. They allow managers to more easily spot people doing something other than heads-down work.
3. They create a new layer of perks for management to give out, namely "You've been promoted, so you can get a cubicle". This is along the same lines as the C-levels and VPs getting proper offices while the peons and team leads still have cubicles.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 21 2018, @04:20PM (8 children)
4) It's harder to stuff additional people into a cube. With "open plan offices", you can have one long desk designed to seat six...and then a month later it seats 8, and a month after that it seats 10, and pretty soon you've got people straddling filing cabinets all day long because what used to be one desk with a filing cabinet under each side has now become three desks.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @05:13PM (7 children)
Reminds me of a new hire we had once. We told facilities and HR we needed a new person. HR got on it right away, but facilities kept dragging their feet and then finally told us that they couldn't do anything until the person was actually hired. We hired the guy and IT provisioned their equipment, but certain secure things can only be accessed if you are connected via Ethernet. And because everyone claimed the various breakout and conference rooms, his "desk" was a file cabinet near the corner, as that was the only place near the rest of us that could reach all the necessary connections.
A few days in, VP was giving the SVP (who is actually a cool guy who knows what he is talking about) a tour and generally schmoozing and the SVP saw the guy in the corner working away. After inquiring about the situation and being greeted by excuses, the SVP said, "So let me get this straight. You think it is good management practice have a guy literally working on a filing cabinet for 2 months while you wait for a desk because facilities is too slow and people are too territorial? Tell you what, if I come back tomorrow and you can't find a way to resolve this by then, I'll show you how to manage a situation. But, and this is just a suggestion, you could give the poor kid one of your desks. [pause for 5 seconds or so] Wait, how many did you show me you had to 'maximize efficiency'? Six?" And then he just walked away.
Well, what do you know, we show up the next morning and the new hire has a desk, and it wasn't one of the VP's six! FWIW, the VP has a convertible corner desk, a convertible second desk forming a pentagon with the first desk, a treadmill desk, a breakout room on permanent reserve, and a sitting desk and standing desk in different areas of the floor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @06:18PM (6 children)
What's an "SVP"?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)
Companies learned long ago that if you give people a fancy sounding title, then they will take less money due to the prestige. So our hierarchy goes like this: Chairman of the Board; Vice-chairs of the board; the board; the President; 5(?) C*Os (e.g. CEO, CFO, CTO, COO); the ~15 SEVPs (Senior Executive Vice Presidents) of a specific area, such as accounting, or facilities, or legal; then comes the countless EVPs (Executive Vice Presidents) of whatever; SVP (Senior Vice Presidents) of whatever; VPs (Vice Presidents) of whatever; GMs (General Managers) of whatever; Seniors (as in Senior Job Title), (this level just uses the job title); and, finally, juniors (Junior Job title).
Hope that clears things up and helps illustrate how job titles in Corporate America are on a giant euphemism treadmill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @07:31PM
Oh, and fun fact. I'm a "General Manager" despite the fact that I have evaluation powers over nobody. It is literally the next step up from my last job as a Senior. They don't even ask me how my secretary is doing (sorry, I meant my Senior Legal Assistant, Compliance). Instead, she reports to the Senior Vice President of Legal Paraprofessionals.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday August 21 2018, @07:17PM (1 child)
SVP = Senior Vice-President
VP = Vice-President
They are predominantly American (USA) titles that indicate the relative position in an office hierarchy. SVP outranks VP.
'C-level' indicates someone on a company's board - like Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Financial Officer (CIO)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:06PM
EVP = Executive Vice President
(I happen to have the ear of one of those, and on occasion it is a good thing.)
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(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday August 21 2018, @07:42PM
senior vice president
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:55PM
Lots of people have answered this correctly, but I think they're all a little bit wrong too.
After working at a massive US-owned multi-national for a few years now I think a Senior Vice President is someone who once ran a part of the business, and was promoted into a role he (or she) has no clue about and in the intervening time lost any insight into the part of the business they did understand.
They then travel around the company asking irrelevant questions about things they don't understand and starting expensive and pointless projects that do nothing useful until they're found out and "retire".
At least that's how we do it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:12PM (4 children)
People here can work remotely, from home. I can definitely understand why some people do depending on what part of the US they are in or how far the office is from home.
I don't do that. I like keeping my home at home and work (and SN*) at the office.
* at least between commits or completing JIRA issues.
Then there is also the fact that I have a grueling 10 minute commute with 5 traffic lights. So it's easy to go to work and come home.
It once was a 7 minute commute with 3 traffic lights, until the city improved the road as traffic increased over the years.
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:46PM (2 children)
You should check because you may have died and gone to heaven.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 22 2018, @12:41PM (1 child)
The other possibility is that I have been involuntarily committed. But that has not happened, so far as I am able to determine.
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:33PM
I'll ask the nurse.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:00AM
I certainly understand that. Right now, I work out of a home office because I'm independent and there's no reason for me to take on the expense of renting out an office.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @04:01AM
Yeah right. Where I work people read the news for half an hour at a time even when managers walk in the room. People stand around talking. People do annoying things where the sound travels across the floor. Open plan offices suck. They don't improve productivity or collaboration.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:25PM
It's all just part of the Zero Privacy Future. Embrace it! Enjoy being tracked by facial recognition and gait analysis algorithms wherever you go. Smile while cash is forcibly made obsolete and all of your purchases can be effortlessly tracked. Revel in the fact that your employer and the many cameras everywhere in the office always have a clear view of you. Rejoice at the notion that not only will corporations hold all of this data, but the government will be able to get it too! Thank the government officials who conduct invasive searches of your person when you try to use any form of public transportation, all the while they tell you that the searches are completely voluntary because you could have just decided not to use public transportation. Finally, contemplate suicide as you think about how most citizens either accept these things for 'security' or 'convenience'.