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Objective This study examined office workstation types' impact on the relationship between fatigue and three health metrics: physical activity, stress, and sleep quality. Methods Data from 225 office workers were collected for perceived fatigue, perceived sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI]), physiological stress response (standard deviation of heart rate variability [HRV]), and physical activity (total activity in minutes) during three consecutive workdays. Stress and physical activity were measured using chest-worn sensors. Workers were then categorized as tired or not-tired based on the median of the fatigue rating. Results Among tired workers, open-bench seating workers had increased physical activity, improved sleep quality, and reduced stress compared with workers in private offices and cubicles. Conclusions Office workstation types influence physical activity and levels of stress during work hours, which in turn affect sleep quality.

This study offers a new perspective on the role of relative humidity in strategies to improve the health and wellbeing of office workers. A lack of studies of sufficient participant size and diversity relating relative humidity (RH) to measured health outcomes has been a driving factor in relaxing thermal comfort standards for RH and removing a lower limit for dry air. We examined the association between RH and objectively measured stress responses, physical activity (PA), and sleep quality. A diverse group of office workers (n = 134) from four well‐functioning federal buildings wore chest‐mounted heart rate variability monitors for three consecutive days, while at the same time, RH and temperature (T) were measured in their workplaces. Those who spent the majority of their time at the office in conditions of 30%‐60% RH experienced 25% less stress at the office than those who spent the majority of their time in drier conditions. Further, a correlational study of our stress response suggests optimal values for RH may exist within an even narrower range around 45%. Finally, we found an indirect effect of objectively measured poorer sleep quality, mediated by stress responses, for those outside this range.

It is well established that light affects both visual and non-visual systems. Laboratory studies have shown that, depending upon the time of exposure, short-wavelength light of sufficient amount and exposure duration will either entrain or disrupt the synchrony between our biological clock and our local position on Earth. Laboratory studies have also shown that light across the entire visible spectrum can enhance alertness, both day and night. Scant attention has been given to testing the effects of light on building occupants’ non-visual responses, and, consequently, lighting specifiers have been offered little guidance on the design and application of lighting for non-visual effects. The present study helps to fill that gap through field-testing of light exposures from a novel luminaire designed to promote entrainment and alertness throughout the day in actual office environments. The data support the inference that light exposures, when properly applied, can promote circadian entrainment and increase alertness.

This study examined office workstation types' impact on the relationship between fatigue and three health metrics: physical activity, stress, and sleep quality.Data from 225 office workers were collected for perceived fatigue, perceived sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI]), physiological stress response (standard deviation of heart rate variability [HRV]), and physical activity (total activity in minutes) during three consecutive workdays. Stress and physical activity were measured using chest-worn sensors. Workers were then categorized as tired or not-tired based on the median of the fatigue rating.Among tired workers, open-bench seating workers had increased physical activity, improved sleep quality, and reduced stress compared with workers in private offices and cubicles.Office workstation types influence physical activity and levels of stress during work hours, which in turn affect sleep quality.

Employee personality traits have long been studied in the context of workplace outcomes, and drawbacks of certain workstation types have become regularly debated in the last decade. However, very little is known at the intersection of these two areas of interest. This study of 231 federal office workers explored how personality levels interacted with workstation type (open bench seating, cubicle, private office) on-task focus and happiness. Momentary assessment and global, one-time survey methods were used to capture a more ecologically valid understanding of such interactions. While global ratings of task focus were higher for those in private offices than those in cubicles and open bench seating, there were no differences between workstation types in momentary assessments of focus. Several personality trait-workstation type interactions were found, including support for the idea that certain affordances of open bench seating are more beneficial to momentary focus and happiness for employees high in extraversion, while detrimental to momentary focus for those high on neuroticism. Taken together, these findings suggest that a consideration of individual differences is critical to advance the workstation design conversation in order to best support the most valuable asset of an organization: the employee. Concern for the employee is especially important in the current context of the global pandemic that is driving a rapid evolution in approaches to both short and long-term strategies for workplace design and policy.

A field study was conducted at two U.S. federal government office sites and two U.S. embassies to demonstrate whether circadian-effective lighting (providing circadian stimulus (CS) values of CS ≥ 0.3) could be installed in office buildings, and to determine whether this lighting intervention would reduce sleepiness and increase alertness, vitality and energy in office workers while at work. Desktop and/or overhead luminaires provided circadian-effective lighting at participants’ eyes during a two-day intervention. A pendant-mounted Daysimeter device was used to measure participant-specific CS values during the baseline and the intervention days. Participants also completed questionnaires inquiring about sleep habits, stress and subjective feelings of vitality and energy. The Daysimeter data showed that participants were exposed to significantly higher amounts of circadian-effective light while at work during the two intervention days compared to the baseline day. Self-reported sleepiness scores were significantly reduced during the intervention days compared to the baseline day. As hypothesised, participants also reported feeling significantly more vital, energetic and alert on the intervention days compared to the baseline day. The present results from four independent office environments demonstrate that lighting systems delivering a CS ≥ 0.3 can reduce sleepiness and increase vitality and alertness in office workers.

Biophilic design is one of a number of trending design practices that rely on nature-based systems, engineering principles and design cues to improve environmental quality, health, and efficiency. Biophilic design integrates but does not appropriate the contributions of other nature-based design techniques precisely because it can act as a platform or “interstitial tissue,” providing a connective language/practice/ethos that can unite disparate practices in the built environment more broadly. This paper provides an illustrative compilation of how biophilic design practices can directly support resilience in human health and the built environment on behalf of the International Living Future Institute's Biophilic Design Advisory Board. We strongly advocate the use of metrics related to climate change mitigation as a dimension of performance analysis for biophilic design practices as a demonstration of professional mindfulness and responsibility.

ObjectiveOffice environments have been causally linked to workplace-related illnesses and stress, yet little is known about how office workstation type is linked to objective metrics of physical activity and stress. We aimed to explore these associations among office workers in US federal office buildings.MethodsWe conducted a wearable, sensor-based, observational study of 231 workers in four office buildings. Outcome variables included workers’ physiological stress response, physical activity and perceived stress. Relationships between office workstation type and these variables were assessed using structural equation modelling.ResultsWorkers in open bench seating were more active at the office than those in private offices and cubicles (open bench seating vs private office=225.52 mG (31.83% higher on average) (95% CI 136.57 to 314.46); open bench seating vs cubicle=185.13 mG (20.16% higher on average) (95% CI 66.53 to 303.72)). Furthermore, workers in open bench seating experienced lower perceived stress at the office than those in cubicles (−0.27 (9.10% lower on average) (95% CI −0.54 to −0.02)). Finally, higher physical activity at the office was related to lower physiological stress (higher heart rate variability in the time domain) outside the office (−26.12 ms/mG (14.18% higher on average) (95% CI −40.48 to −4.16)).ConclusionsOffice workstation type was related to enhanced physical activity and reduced physiological and perceived stress. This research highlights how office design, driven by office workstation type, could be a health-promoting factor.

Recent development of wearable sensor technologies have made it possible to capture concurrent data streams for ambient environment and instantaneous physiological stress response at a fine granularity. Characterizing the delay in physiological stress response time to each environment stimulus is as important as capturing the magnitude of the effect. In this paper, we discuss and evaluate a new regularization-based statistical method to determine the ideal lagged effect of five environmental factors-carbon dioxide, temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure and noise levels on instantaneous stress response. Using this method, we infer that the first four environment variables have a cumulative lagged effect, of approximately 60 minutes, on stress response whereas noise level has an instantaneous effect on stress response. The proposed transformations to inputs result in models with better fit and predictive performance. This study not only informs the field of environment-wellbeing research about the cumulative lagged effects of the specified environmental factors, but also proposes a new method for determining optimal feature transformation in similar smart health studies.

Background By affecting the internal timing mechanisms of the brain, light regulates human physiology and behavior, perhaps most notably the sleep–wake cycle. Humans spend over 90% of their waking hours indoors, yet light in the built environment is not designed to affect circadian rhythms. Objective Using a device calibrated to measure light that is effective for the circadian system (circadian-effective light), collect personal light exposures in office workers and relate them to their sleep and mood. Setting The research was conducted in 5 buildings managed by the US General Services Administration. Participants This study recruited 109 participants (69 females), of whom 81 (54 females) participated in both winter and summer. Measurements Self-reported measures of mood and sleep, and objective measures of circadian-effective light and activity rhythms were collected for 7 consecutive days. Results Compared to office workers receiving low levels of circadian-effective light in the morning, receiving high levels in the morning is associated with reduced sleep onset latency (especially in winter), increased phasor magnitudes (a measure of circadian entrainment), and increased sleep quality. High levels of circadian-effective light during the entire day are also associated with increased phasor magnitudes, reduced depression, and increased sleep quality. Conclusions The present study is the first to measure personal light exposures in office workers using a calibrated device that measures circadian-effective light and relate those light measures to mood, stress, and sleep. The study's results underscore the importance of daytime light exposures for sleep health.

With rapid development of sensor technologies and the internet of things, research in the area of connected health is increasing in importance and complexity with wide-reaching impacts for public health. As data sources such as mobile (wearable) sensors get cheaper, smaller, and smarter, important research questions can be answered by combining information from multiple data sources. However, integration of multiple heterogeneous data streams often results in a dataset with several empty cells or missing values. The challenge is to use such sparsely populated integrated datasets without compromising model performance. Naive approaches for dataset modification such as discarding observations or ad-hoc replacement of missing values often lead to misleading results. In this paper, we discuss and evaluate current best-practices for modeling such data with missing values and then propose an ensemble-learning based sparse-data modeling framework. We develop a predictive model using this framework and compare it with existing models using a study in a healthcare setting. Instead of generating a single score on variable/feature importance, our framework enables the user to understand the importance of a variable based on the existing data values and their localized impact on the outcome.

The increasingly collaborative nature of knowledge-based work requires workplaces to support both dynamic interactions and concentrated work, both of which are critical for collaboration performance. Given the prevalence of open-plan settings, this requirement has created new challenges for workplace design. Therefore, an understanding of the relationship between the spatial characteristics of workplace settings and the support for collaboration that is perceived by office workers is valuable and timely. Based on a study of 308 office workers in 27 office spaces, this article examines the relationship between a series of workplace spatial characteristics and the support that is perceived by the occupants for collaborations. The spatial characteristics that were examined included individual workstation characteristics that were derived from the literature and a new set of floor-plan layout variables that highlighted shared spaces that are critical for a variety of formal and informal collaboration activities at work. The key characteristics of workplace spatial settings that were associated with the support that the occupants perceived for collaboration were the distance from workstation to meeting space, the distance from workstation to shared service area, the distance from workstation to kitchen/coffee area, and the percentage of floor space that was dedicated to shared services and amenities.

The growing demand for new approaches to support the changing nature of work and organizational structure has spawned innovations from both manufacturers and space designers. The result is a multitude of new concepts and designs, but little data on how well and under what circumstances these innovations are effective. New products, technologies, and concepts are frequently implemented without knowledge of their impacts on work, much less their value to high-level organizational goals. The measurement most commonly used is still cost, or even less sensibly, square feet. To remedy this shortcoming, the U.S. General Service Administration's Public Buildings Service assembled an interagency research team and recognized academic and private sector leaders to identify "best practice" workplace strategies and the research tools holding the most promise for evaluating their impact. They evaluated the linkages among organizational performance (Business), the physical attributes of the workspace (Building), and the changes in work processes, perceptions, and attitudes that result from changes to this physical space (Behavior). This article provides an overview of the GSA program and preliminary results from two pilot projects.

In this study, room brightness preferences of two groups of subjects were tested across an eight month period in a lighting simulation laboratory. Subjects were selected on the basis of their responses to the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ) used by researchers to screen for seasonal affective disorder (SAD). One group of 10 subjects scored high on the SPAQ, indicating seasonal changes in mood and behavior. A control group matched on age and gender did not experience seasonal changes in any of the symptoms measured by the SPAQ. The study tested two hypotheses: (a) people with SAD are "light hungry" and should prefer a more brightly lighted room; and (b) if "light hunger" is seasonal, then the SAD group should prefer brighter light in the winter than in the spring months. Results indicate that the SAD group preferred a more brightly lighted room than did the control group across all testing sessions, thus supporting the first hypothesis. Because lighting levels did not differ significantly across the testing sessions, light hunger does not appear to be a seasonally expressed need. The SAD group had significantly higher levels of negative affect and depression across the testing sessions than did the control group. However, the SAD-like symptoms did not disappear in June, as expected. These findings suggest that (a) the SAD group did not, in fact, have SAD; or (b) testing did not occur long enough to measure mood and behavior changes. Results are discussed in terms of vulnerability to affective episodes and lack of light in the environment.

The central challenge of the cognitive workplace is to facilitate the development, sharing and application of thoughts, ideas and knowledge stored in individual minds. To be useful to an organization, individually held cognitions must be externalized and made available to others. The physical environment can aid this transfer process by creating conditions that address the cognitive needs of both individuals and groups.

The Green and Mitchell (1979) model of the process by which supervisors diagnose and deal with the causes of subordinates' poor performance is based upon attribution theory. The notion is that the supervisor makes an attribution about the cause of the poor performance and then selects an appropriate response or solution to deal with the problem. Two ways in which this can lead to an inapprorpriate solution are, first, a bias toward making internal attributions and, second, an aversion to using costly, even though appropriate, solutions. This study demonstrates that it is possible to prompt participants to make more external attribution about poor performance. It also demonstrates that whichever attributions they make (either internal or external), the solutions they select to deal with the poor performance are congruent with their attributions provided that the solutions do not have explicit implementation costs associated with them. However, when implementation costs are made explicit, costs influence solution selection and reduce the congruence between the attributions and the selected solutions. The possible implications of this finding for success in dealing with poor performance are discussed.

This study examined the relative importance of medical school pressures according to their relationship with symptoms of anxiety, as evaluated by a standardized/normative measure of anxiety. As many as 206 (34 per cent) of the total sample (N = 605) of students reported symptoms of anxiety above the median of a normative population of psychiatric outpatients. Using multiple regression, six medical school experiences significantly accounted for 36 per cent of the variance in anxiety scores. These included: perceived threat, mastering knowledge, anonymity, little time for personal activities, peer competition, and long hours. These results are important for two reasons. Contrary to the traditional belief that stressful experiences are necessary for future medical practice, research suggests that stress and anxiety are major causes of cognitive dysfunction. The identification of those experiences that are most anxiety provoking should help therapists and educators to develop intervention strategies in order to reduce anxiety and increase the quality of medical education.