Open office designs have had a huge amount of stick recently, with a recent Harvard study saying that they harm collaboration.  This has come on top of a number of previous studies suggesting they’re bad for productivity and employee happiness.

What might they do for our physical and mental health?  That was the question posed by a recent study from the University of Arizona.  The research finds that we tend to engage in higher levels of physical activity when working in open office designs than when in private offices, which is then linked to lower stress levels when we get home at night.

The research tracked a few hundred people with stress and activity sensors as they went about their life over a week.  The idea was to understand their activity and stress levels both inside and outside the work environment.

Healthier workers

The research found that people working in an open plan environment were 32% more active than their peers who worked in private offices, and 20% more active than those in cubicles.  This then had a knock on effect on their emotional wellbeing when they got home, with open office workers 14% less physiologically stressed than their peers.

“This research highlights how office design, driven by office workstation type, could be an important health promoting factor,” the authors say.

Physical activity is high on the agenda of many workplace wellbeing personnel, especially after sitting for prolonged periods was compared to smoking last year, such is its negative impact on our health.

“Objective measurements using wearable sensors can inform policies and practices that affect the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of office workers worldwide,” the researchers explain.

Suffice to say, the authors accept that this is not grounds to retain open plan offices on its own, they do nonetheless hope that it provides some more objective evidence to support the debate around the pros and cons of such a workplace.