From stress to success with data-driven office design

Perceptions of uncomfortable noise levels and lack of privacy in open plan offices can have measurable negative effects on employee stress and mood.¹ To quantify participants’ environmental satisfaction, we used the Satisfaction with Environmental Features (SEF) assessment.² The SEF uses 18 questions to judge how satisfied participants are with various aspects of their physical environment, delivering an overall satisfaction score as well as specific sub-measures of privacy, ventilation, and light quality, allowing us to evaluate the changes in stress and cognitive performance against environmental satisfaction.

Changes in Environmental Satisfaction between the Old and New Offices in Tokyo

In this study, we found that higher levels of stress negatively impacted cognitive engagement, a key performance metric that evaluates the level of immersion in a task. On average, those with low stress exhibited more engagement than those with moderate stress. The negative relationship persisted in both offices, indicating that addressing psychological stress should be a key concern for future workplace design efforts.

Cognitive Engagement vs Stress Level

^{1 Sander, E. J., Marques, C., Birt, J., Stead, M., & Baumann, O. (2021). Open-plan office noise is stressful: multimodal stress detection in a simulated work environment. Journal of Management and Organization, 27(6), 1021-1037. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2021.17
2 Veitch, J. A., Charles, K. E., Farley, K. M., & Newsham, G. R. (2007). A model of satisfaction with open-plan office conditions: COPE field findings. J of Env Psych, 27(3). 
3 Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1994). Perceived stress scale. Measuring stress: A guide for health and social scientists, 10(2), 1-2.}