Tag Archive for Cubicle

| January 26, 2019
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Don’t Be SAD

Don't Be SADThe holidays are in the rear-view mirror. You drive to work in the snow. You have to dodge potholes in the dark on the way home. And we have 8-10 more weeks of winter. The likelihood of a getaway to the sun and sand is pathetically low. No wonder your mood sucks. It is SAD.

Seasonal Affective Disorder SADOfficially it’s Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD includes feelings of fatigue, depression, and anxiety that occur every winter. Experts say SAD impacts over two million people. SAD is rooted in several factors. The lack of sunlight in winter can throw off your circadian rhythms your biological clock. This cut levels of the neurotransmitters serotonin (a brain chemical that regulates your mood) and melatonin (a chemical that regulates sleep and mood). This can lead to a rough few months. Fortunately, there are ways to beat back SAD while at work.

Manage your stress. Stress management is a natural treatment option for SAD.

Catch some rays. Get outside breath in some fresh air every day. Studies confirm that spending time outside can relieve stress and fight SAD. At the office. open the shades and let as much sunlight in as possible.

Clean your cube.  Give your workspace a thorough cleaning. Getting rid of things you don’t need. Straightening up your everyday items can give your space a more peaceful feeling. A fresh desk can be what you need to help keep SAD at bay.

Get a desk plant. Instead of waiting around for Spring to roll around to experience signs of life, take matters into your own hands and invest in a plant for your desk.

Takea pant to workCut carbs. Avoid slurping on comfort foods like chips and cake. Carbohydrate-rich foods can actually be counterproductive for fighting the blues. The happiness delivered is short-lived, as the spike in blood sugar levels will leave you feeling worse after.

Eat asparagus. Use your lunch break to help combat SAD. Add asparagus to a salad or use it as a side to reap the benefits. Asparagus has heaps of tryptophan, an amino acid that is essential to producing serotonin.

AsparagusEat dark chocolate. Keep a bar of dark chocolate at your desk. It can do more than satisfy your sweet tooth. It can also elevate your mood. Studies show that dark chocolate promotes the release of endorphins that give an instant boost to happiness. Dark chocolate is also rich in serotonin.

Try some tech. Use technology to block blue light. Blue light suppresses serotonin making it harder to fall asleep. Of course, there is an app for that. You can try Night Shift on your Apple (AAPL) product, Twilight on your Google (GOOG) Android or f.lux on your PC to cut blue light. Or try blue light blocking glasses.

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Of course, I’m no doctor so consult with a health care professional. But it is nice to know you can manage your SAD symptoms by eating chocolate-dipped asparagus at your sunny clean desk.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Health care | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| March 17, 2018
Comments Off on Take a Plant to Work

Take a Plant to Work

Take a Plant to WorkMany of us spend more time at work than anywhere else. And most of our homes away from home are office cubicles. Cube farms, the 50-year-old static symbol of resistance to change, are good for the business and won’t go away anytime soon. So you should have a plant in your cube.

Take a Plant to WorkDespite being good for business, the cube farm is making us sick, according to Danica-Lea Larcombe with Edith Cowan University. She wrote in The Conversation that office cubes can cause real health issues. She argues that office buildings are worse for our health than our homes. Office cubicles usually consist of partitions made of particle board and vinyl carpet, synthetic flooring, a particle board desk, and plastic or synthetic office chairs, lit mainly by artificial lighting with poor ventilation. All of these factors combine to make us cranky and sick.

Chemical compounds

The author writes that formaldehyde is one of the many chemical compounds given off by synthetic office furnishings. It can irritate the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, and throat and cause allergic contact dermatitis. Irritation of the eyes and upper respiratory tract, as well as headaches, are the most commonly reported symptoms of exposure to formaldehyde toxins.

Dangerous chemicals

Other harmful chemicals in the office mentioned in the article include benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, and even ammonia from cleaning products. High carbon dioxide levels breathed out by a roomful of colleagues can give the room that “stuffy” feeling, mainly if there is no air conditioning.

The author says one excellent way to combat sick days and stress is to fill your office with plants. She recommends plants that will “scrub” the air of pathogens, improve the office’s mix of bacteria, and survive in low light with little care.

Cube farm

 

Indoor plants purify the air, reducing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including formaldehyde. A NASA clean air study tested common indoor plants’ ability to filter pollutants and found that many effectively remove organic compounds from the air. The article says,  one medium-sized plant per 24 square feet of office space should be used for best results.

microbial cloud

Plant bacterias

Dr. Larcombe says you should also improve the balance of indoor bacteria to survive in the office environment. There are already trillions of bacteria in offices, but only a limited amount come in through open windows and air conditioning from the outdoor environment. Most bacteria, fungi, and viruses come from people; we leave behind a microbial cloud on our skin wherever we go. The office environment creates new habitats for microbial communities that are foreign to human skin and not good for your health.

Beneficial bacteria on indoor plants and their soil are essential to the office, stabilizing its synthetic environment. Plant-associated bacteria could also help avoid disease outbreaks by enhancing microbial biodiversity and balancing the complex network of the ecosystem. A wholesome balance may reduce the incidence of viral illness and the number of sick days among staff. It’s not just the size of the plant that’s important here. Larger pots mean more root mass and soil surface for helpful bacteria and root microbes.

reduce stress

Plants promote public health

The article also claims plants can help beat stress. Over the past 30 years, research has shown that green spaces promote public health and that contact with nature can shift highly stressed people to a more positive emotional state. Research has found that when present, plants reduce mental stresses:

  • Tension/Anxiety – 37% reduction
  • Depression/Dejection – 58% reduction
  • Anger/Hostility – 44% reduction
  • Fatigue – 38% reduction

There are a few basic principles for a good office plant. It must be hardy, easy to maintain, and able to survive without water over weekends (or when the regular plant carer goes on holiday). Plants adapted to low light will do the most good in cubicles and spaces away from windows. Look for species with large leaves (the more leaf surface area, the more efficient it is). Avoiding plants that flower extravagantly is also a good idea, but it may cause allergic reactions. Check with your colleagues before introducing new plants.

Some of the best plants the article recommends for the office are:

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Offices, particularly those with many people, poor ventilation, or low natural light, should consider plants necessary. Plants will improve the atmosphere, mood, and health of the workplace.

Related article

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Health care | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
| January 9, 2014
Comments Off on Ban Cubes

Ban Cubes

Ban CubesSarah Green at the Harvard Business Review reported on research by Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear at the University of Sydney. They looked at the impact of office cubes on office-dwellers productivity. The brainiac’s found furniture design impacts how the staff works. There are three key factors sound privacy, visual privacy, and temperature.

impact of office design on office-dwellers productivityThe study found that 30% of workers in cubes were dissatisfied with the noise level of their workspaces. 25% of workers in partitionless offices, were dissatisfied with the noise level of their workspaces. Worst yet, according to the data, is that these workers can’t control what they hear or who hears them.

Most despised feature

HBR says the lack of sound privacy was the most despised issue in the survey. They found that 60% of cubicle workers and half of all partitionless people indicating it as a frustration. Researchers guess that the partitionless people are slightly less bothered by it because at least they can see where the noise is coming from. This gives them a sense of control — no matter how illusory. It’s likely that partitionless office dwellers are listening to music on headphones to block out distractions.

Susan Adams at Forbes reports that workers assigned to cubes are the least happy among us. With open plan dwellers are not far behind. In addition to the sound privacy complaint, more than 30% of people who don’t have their own offices feel frustrated by a lack of “visual privacy.”  In other words, they have to look at their colleagues whether they like it or not. Almost as many find the general noise level frustrating.

Cubes decrease work satisfaction

Forbes cites researcher Kim who said that open office plans decrease work satisfaction in a statement:

Open plan office layouts have been touted as a way to boost workplace satisfaction and team effectiveness in recent years. We found people in open-plan offices were less satisfied with their workplace environment than those in private offices.

The researchers found the single most important issue was a lack of space. That held true no matter what kind of office you had — an enclosed office, cubes, or an open layout.

Shrinking cubesSo if workers hate cubes why do architects and bosses love cubes? Most likely they looked at studies that have shown we only spend 35% of our time at our workstations, so they decided to make everything modular or abolish the office to save money and let the collaboration flow. But Ms. Green says not so fast. Previous research, cited by Kim and de Dear, has already shown that noise decreases key productivity.

… the loss of productivity due to noise distraction … was doubled in open-plan offices compared to private offices, and the tasks requiring complex verbal process were more likely to be disturbed than relatively simple or routine tasks.

Forbes explained that the idea behind open-plan offices is that workers will be more likely to talk to each other and collaborate. But it turns out that was a theory that was not based on empirical evidence. HRB ran a piece that described a study of employees at Scandinavian Airlines. Apparently, after the airline made their HQ über comfy and management encouraged employees to hold “impromptu meetings” and “creative encounters.” Instead, just 27% of employee exchanges happened in public spaces. Two-thirds of employee exchanges still took place in private offices, most likely because people can hear each other better and protect themselves from being heard by unwanted ears.

Unintended consequence

unintended consequencesAnother unintended consequence of open office spaces: they aren’t good for people who tend to be more on top of their work, according to a study covered by Annie Murphy Paul in Time magazine. Open office planners thought that workers would help one another with challenging tasks. But it turns out that while those who need help do better, those who offer help fare worse. Forbes concludes that is not surprising when you think about it. If I know how to do a task, I’m better off getting on to the next thing, and not losing time trying to teach a less-able coworker.

The not-so-surprising bottom line of the study according to Forbes is that workers in their own offices came out ahead in every category studied. Those who sit in cubicles are the most miserable, expressing the highest degree of dissatisfaction in 13 out of 15 categories.

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Not only do cubes kill worker productivity, but they are also a major pain to support. First, the floors have to be trenched and then underground pathways have to be built and inspected before the floor is patched. Hopefully, the cement guys don’t fill the boxes with cement and then the furniture people miss their marks so cable gets exposed and the owner complains about a sloppy install.

Ban cubes !!!

Related articles

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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