Numerous private and public organizations have already adopted the concept of open-plan offices and many other companies are currently considering a switch from traditional cellular offices to such open layouts. Common arguments for investing in such open spaces are their claimed cost efficiency and flexible layout; their assumed ability to facilitate interaction among employees; and, ultimately, their presumed potential to improve work performance and productivity.<\/p>\n In a new study researchers have investigated the associations between office type (cellular office, shared-room office, small open-plan office, and medium-sized open-plan office) and employees’ job satisfaction, well-being, and ease of interaction with co-workers.<\/p>\n “The results show a negative relationship between the number of co-workers sharing an office and employees’ job satisfaction<\/strong>. This association was mediated by ease of interaction with co-workers and subjective wellbeing<\/strong>, with employees working in small and medium-sized open-plan offices reporting lower levels of both these aspects than employees who work either alone in cellular offices or together with up to two colleagues in shared-room offices,” says Ph D Tobias Otterbring and continues:<\/p>\n “The open-plan offices may have short-term financial benefits, but these benefits may be substantially lower than the costs associated with decreased job satisfaction and wellbeing. Therefore, decision-makers should consider the impact of a given office type on employees rather than focusing solely on cost-effective office layout, flexibility, and productivity<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n They study was recently published in\u00a0Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health<\/em>. The article “The relationship between office type and job satisfaction: Testing a multiple mediation model though ease of interaction and well-being” is written by Tobias Otterbring, J\u00f6rg Pareigis and Erik W\u00e4stlund at CTF, Service Research Center at Karlstad University, Sweden, and Alexander Makrygiannis and Anton Lindstr\u00f6m at Aarhus University, Denmark.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n From the Karlstad University press release: It is becoming increasingly common for employees to share the workplace with their colleagues in large open-plan office areas. In this way, companies and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[526,8],"tags":[20,59,58,143,12,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25724"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25724"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25736,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25724\/revisions\/25736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/depressed_bullied_worker.jpg\")
It is becoming increasingly common for employees to share the workplace with their colleagues in large open-plan office areas. In this way, companies and organizations want to save money, but also facilitate the interaction between the employees. However, a new study from CTF, Service Research Center at Karlstad University, Sweden, shows the opposite. The more co-workers that share the workplace, the less satisfied the employees are, and the more difficult they think it is to have a good dialogue with their colleagues<\/strong>.<\/p>\n