Office Etiquette? Open Plan Workspaces May Facilitate Virus Spread

There are many reasons why wringing all of the inefficiencies out of a system has downsides. This is just the latest. JL

Konrad Putzier reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Cubicles and private offices have made way for open floors, where a sneeze or cough can circulate uninterrupted. Companies have removed physical barriers between employees, encouraging them to socialize as much as possible. (But) after years of squeezing ever more workers into tighter office spaces, companies are realizing how efficiently the modern workspace can spread diseases like the coronavirus. “The coffee break room, actually, is more contaminated than the restroom.”

After years of squeezing ever more workers into tighter office spaces, companies are realizing how efficiently the modern workspace can spread diseases like the coronavirus.

Cubicles and private offices have made way for open floors, where a sneeze or cough can circulate uninterrupted. Companies have removed physical barriers between employees, encouraging them to socialize as much as possible.

Between 2018 and 2019, the average office space per seat in North America declined by 14.3% to 195.6 square feet, according to brokerage firm JLL’s 2020 Occupancy Benchmarking Report.

Many companies also have abolished assigned seating, rotating workers through the office. That means workers in many offices are now more likely to touch surfaces contaminated by others. Popular public areas are sometimes more prone to spread germs than restrooms, health researchers say. Inspired by tech startups and co-working companies, more offices feature snack bars, beer kegs and other spots where workers can mingle and spread germs.

Using less space per worker has allowed companies to reduce their rent bills, and the spread of disease was a minor concern when the biggest danger was the seasonal flu. Now that the more dangerous coronavirus is spreading, some real-estate and health experts suggest changes are in order.

“We spend more time in offices than any generation in history,” said Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona. “That’s really why it becomes more important to think about the spread of disease and how we can design buildings better.”

Some U.S. companies are already shuttering offices and sending workers home to prevent the coronavirus from spreading among their workers. Others are distributing disinfecting wipes and cutting down on travel and meetings.

The danger might be lower if offices were designed differently. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the disease tends to spread between people within 6 feet of each other, and through coughs and sneezes.

In a study of more than 1,800 Swedish office workers that was published in 2014, a group of researchers from Stockholm University found that open-plan offices lead to more sick leaves. Among the possible explanations is that these offices can be more stressful, and risk of infection may be greater. The study also found that offices without assigned desks lead to more extended sick leaves, but only among men.

Open-floor offices and hot desks go back decades, but they have become more popular among some companies as their approach to work has evolved to emphasize more collaboration

Tech companies often prize open offices, and their workspaces in turn inspired others. When Facebook announced the design of its new California headquarters in 2012, it said it would be the world’s largest open-office floor plan.

“The idea is to make the perfect engineering space: one giant room that fits thousands of people, all close enough to collaborate together,” the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time.

Last week, Facebook temporarily closed a Seattle office after a worker there was diagnosed with the disease caused by the coronavirus. “We’ve notified our employees and are following the advice of public health officials,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement.

Coworking companies also helped accelerate the shift to densely populated offices. They pay rent by the square foot but charge membership fees by the desk. That gives them an incentive to squeeze as many people as possible into their spaces. Coworking companies often use as little as 65 to 100 square feet per worker, according to brokerage Cushman & Wakefield.

Some encourage proximity in the name of creative interaction. WeWork, for example, has said it made certain corridors narrower to make it more likely that workers physically run into each other. “We’ll create purposeful points of density,” WeWork’s then-creative director Justin Capuco told Wired in 2018. “It sounds funny, but we want our members to have that sort of proximity.”

A WeWork spokeswoman said the company’s mainland China business has suspended events in common areas, paused breakfast services, asked tenants to receive fewer visitors and is requiring vendors to deliver any goods to spots outside the offices.

“WeWork is prepared to apply these enhanced measures in other locations depending on the severity of the situation,” the spokeswoman wrote in a statement.

In 2017, a group of researchers placed a harmless virus on a doorknob and on the hand of a volunteer in an 100-person office in Tucson, Ariz. Within four hours, the virus was on 50% of the office’s surfaces, spread by human touch, according to Mr. Gerba, one of the researchers who ran the study. It was on desks and telephones and on the handle of the office coffee pot.

“The coffee break room, actually, is more contaminated than the restroom,” said Mr. Gerba.

Mr. Gerba said that companies don’t have to bring back cubicles and private offices to stop diseases from spreading. The study found that the use of hand sanitizers, disinfecting sprays and wipes reduced the prevalence of the virus by more than 85%. Surfaces that kill some germs, such as desks made from copper, also could help, Mr. Gerba added.