Image: WikiMedia Commons
For as long as we've had open space offices, we've had musings on the downsides of these workplaces. Open offices, it's told, are making us less productive, less active, and more miserable. But could they also be making us sick?A review of studies on the subject and a chat with an expert on how common viruses spread reveals that yes, open offices put us at a greater risk of getting sick. It also reveals that humans are disgusting, walking germ-factories, that every office is a person-sized petri dish of infection, and that we should probably all just work from home.Despite all the public discussion on the topic, there hasn't been a huge wealth of scientific study on the effects of the open concept office on employee health. However, the handful of published studies all shows a similar trend: Open office plans are associated with employees getting sick more often.One study of more than 1,800 Swedish workers found that people in open plan offices were nearly twice as likely to take short term sick leave (of one week or less) than those who worked in private offices. A survey from Denmark showed employees in open plan offices were 62 percent more likely to take a sick day than those with their own separate office. Another survey from Canada had similar results, with open office workers taking an average of 3.1 sick days in a year, compares to 1.8 sick days for employees who worked from home. Open offices have also been associated with higher rates of Sick Building Syndrome—a condition where workers get headaches and respiratory problems—and with higher stress levels, which have been linked to weakened immune systems.All of the evidence we've got points to employees in open concept offices getting sick more frequently than those in private offices or those who work from home. But why? First, let's do a little virus 101. The "common cold" is the term we use for a bunch of viruses, which all cause similar symptoms when you're infected. Seasonal flu is caused by a handful of strains of influenza virus. For these two ailments, the virus is spread in three main ways:
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- An infected person touches their nose or mouth, picking up the virus, and then touches a surface. A healthy person then touches that surface, picks up the virus, and then touches their face, infecting themselves.
- An infected person coughs or sneezes and a nearby healthy person inadvertently inhales or swallows some of the infected spit.
- An infected person coughs or sneezes, leaving behind a cloud of viral particles, which a healthy person walks through and inhales.