Open plan office design features affecting staff’s health and well-being status

Abstract

Sustainable office building indoor environment design is a challengeable issue for professionals in thermal comfort, satisfaction, health, and energy fields of research. The professionals intensively need a comprehensive list of office indoor environment design features to promote the level of performance and productivity of staff. One of the most effective factors dealing with staff performance and productivity is physical and psychological health which has not yet been investigated in depth is open-plan office design. In this regard, the current research aimed at establishing a comprehensive list of Open Plan Offices Design (OPOD) features affecting physical and psychological health and well-being of the staff at office buildings. Research methodology engaged two phases corresponding to two objectives. Phase one was to investigate OPOD features and sub-features through a critical literature review using fishbone cause-and-effect analysis technique. Phase one has clustered the OPOD features into two; positive and negative classes. The cause-and-effect analysis determined 3 positive features and 5 negative features involved in the positive and negative classes, respectively. The Efficient Workflow and Performance, Flexible Design, and Cost Efficient were identified as positive OPOD features which involves a number of sub-features. The Distraction, Decreasing Work Feedback, Job Dissatisfaction, Illness, and stress have been determined as OPOD features which impact negatively on staff’s health. The second phase conducted a content analysis on reviewed literatures to indicate the popularity of citation of each OPOD feature in previous studies. The content analysis determined in the Positive cluster, the sub-feature “Facilitate Communication”, under Efficient Workflow & Performance was investigated more than other sub-features. In addition, in the Negative cluster, the sub-feature Auditory Distraction under Distraction was highly investigated. The research asserts that undertaking the research outputs will promote performance and productivity of staff in office buildings. Architects, facility managers, design consultants, and authority may use the output as a decision support checklist for future office design and/or renovations.