Scoping review of health in office design approaches

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to explore the literature on office design approaches (ODAs) in relation to employee health. The overall goal is to facilitate the practical use and theoretical development of design approaches to healthy offices. Design/methodology/approach A scoping review of 7,432 papers collected from 4 electronic databases and 5 scientific journals resulted in the selection of 18 papers for content analysis. Findings Various ODAs relating to building design features and health were identified. The findings highlight challenges for this emergent field, including a paucity of literature on ODAs, a lack of definitions of health and healthy offices, ambiguous design strategies and a lack of a holistic ODA. Originality/value ODAs are potentially valuable resources but an under-considered topic for healthy office development. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first scoping review to map and compare different design approaches in the context of office design and its main contribution is in encouraging researchers and practitioners to bring a salutogenic and holistic perspective to their design approaches.

How Does Office Design Support Employees’ Health? A Case Study on the Relationships among Employees’ Perceptions of the Office Environment, Their Sense of Coherence and Office Design

“…This enables more accurate comparisons between different cases and helps to map positive and negative design aspects in flexible office environments. The study also provides in-depth insights regarding a range of aspects, from risk factors for health (pathogenic aspects) to health-promoting potential of office environments (salutogenic aspects), in response to previous calls for positive approaches toward health) [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Investigations on what makes an office design healthy or about the interrelations between office environments and employees’ health may benefit from adopting such case study approaches.…”

“…Studies show that the physical office environment influences employees’ health. However, most studies have focused on identifying risk factors for health (pathogenic aspects) [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Meanwhile, the health-promoting potential (salutogenic aspects) of office environments, such as nature references as a means of recovering from stress or space personalization as a means of enhancing well-being, have often been overlooked [ 1 ].…”

Environmental demands and resources: a framework for understanding the physical environment for work

“…To map the relevant workplace environment disciplines, we used the model proposed in the recent review by Forooraghi et al (2020), which largely corresponds with the factors F a c i l i t i e s discussed in previous reviews of the multidisciplinary workplace literature (e.g. Al Horr et al, 2016a, 2016b.…”

“…To map the relevant workplace environment disciplines, we used the model proposed in the recent review by Forooraghi et al (2020), which largely corresponds with the factors discussed in previous reviews of the multidisciplinary workplace literature (Al Horr et al, 2016a, 2016b. Accordingly, the workplace environment is conceptualised as a series of factors arranged into three higher-order categories:…”

Conceptualizing social well-being in activity-based offices

“…Ayoko and Ashkanasy, 2020;Gifford, 2014, p. 342;Sander et al, 2019). Yet, in research on healthy offices, social aspects are underexposed (Bennett, 2018;Colenberg et al, 2020;Forooraghi et al, 2020). As noted recently, there is a need for clearer definition of well-being constructs in building research (Hanc et al, 2019).…”