The design and organisation of office concepts play a central role in shaping the context of office work and, potentially, how office workers are affected by their work. This thesis centres around the potential impact of office concepts on a key employee outcome that is currently underexplored in the scientific literature on office concepts, namely sickness absenteeism. The thesis starts by presenting an integrative dimensional framework for characterising office concepts based on office location (e.g. telework from home), layout (e.g., on-site openness), and use (e.g., on-site territoriality), before providing an overview of previous empirical research on office concepts and employee outcomes. It goes on to delineate a conceptual framework for understanding sickness absenteeism and the potential impact of office concepts, arguing for a decision model where health events and attendance propensity is seen as two distinct and crucial components in observed differences in sickness absenteeism across office concepts.
The thesis comprises three empirical papers and supplementary analyses based on data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 2016 and 2019, joined together in two overarching research aims. The first aim is to contribute to a reintegration of office concepts research, based on the observation that most research on on-site office concepts does not incorporate the aspect of telework from home, and vice versa. Paper I addresses this aim by examining concurrent and interactive effects of on-site office concepts and access to telework from home on self-certified absence. Findings from a negative binomial hurdle model indicated that employees in conventional open-plan offices had significantly higher probability of self-certified absence compared to employees in private and conventional shared-room offices, and that employees with access to telework from home had significantly lower probability compared to those without such access. Contrary to expectations, differences in self-certified absence across the on-site office concepts were larger, and not smaller, among employees who could telework from home. Overall, having an on-site private office combined with access to telework from home stood out as an office situation associated with particularly low sickness absenteeism.
The thesis further presents supplementary analyses where associations between the frequency of teleworking from home, on-site office concepts, and self-certified absence are examined. Findings indicated that frequent teleworkers (i.e., those teleworking from home once a week or more often) had significantly lower probability of self-certified absence compared to those who only occasionally or seldom teleworked from home. Interaction effects between teleworking frequency and on-site office concept were not statistically significant. Thus, while teleworking from home may be linked to lower sickness absenteeism regardless of on-site office concept, it might not buffer the link between conventional open-plan offices and higher sickness absenteeism.
The second aim of the thesis is to move past mere observed differences in sickness absenteeism to contribute to a shift towards exploring how and why sickness absenteeism might differ across office concepts. To aid in this aim, Paper II proposes job control as a potential mechanism and examines how much of the observed differences in risk of physician-certified absence across on-site office concepts could be attributed to differential ratings of job control. Findings from a counterfactual mediation analysis indicated significant total and indirect effects for conventional open-plan and non-territorial office types compared to private offices. This suggests that job control may be one of several mediators of observed differences in sickness absenteeism across on-site office concepts.
To further elucidate the complexity behind the observed link between office concepts and sickness absenteeism, Paper III highlights conceptual and methodological reasons for why sickness presenteeism (i.e., attending work while sick or experiencing ill-health) is an outcome worthy of attention in relation to office concepts and why it may be crucial for understanding observed differences in sickness absenteeism. Findings from a Bayesian cumulative probit model indicated similar levels of sickness presenteeism among employees in private and conventional shared-room and open-plan offices and lower levels among employees in non-territorial offices. Differences in sickness presenteeism between private and non-territorial offices further increased as perceived health deteriorated. This suggests that whether you have a personalised desk at work may be relevant for attending versus not attending work when faced with sickness or ill-health and, consequently, for interpreting observed differences in sickness absenteeism between non-territorial offices and conventional office types.
The joint findings of this thesis suggest that the potential impact of different office concepts on sickness absenteeism may be worth scientific and practical consideration. While small effect sizes suggest that office concepts play only a minor role in the overall prediction of sickness absenteeism, they carry more weight at the organisational and societal level as many workers are exposed to telework from home and open-plan and non-territorial offices in contemporary working life. Overall, our findings suggest that access to and frequent use of telework from home might decrease sickness absenteeism, while on-site openness and non-territoriality might increase it. The decision model of absenteeism advocated in this thesis both extend and challenge the current pool of explanatory mechanisms for such findings, highlighting that office concepts may influence sickness absenteeism both by triggering health events and by shifting attendance propensity towards absence or presence in the face of health events.
Looking ahead, hybrid work arrangements underscore the importance of closing the current divide between research on telework from home and on-site workspace and the relevance of exploring the dynamics and interplay of different office concept dimensions and their influence on employee outcomes like sickness absenteeism. Moving beyond mere observed differences is crucial, considering the diverse pathways by which office concepts could potentially influence sickness absenteeism and presenteeism. More research is also needed on new and emerging office concepts, such as activity-based offices, for which the current knowledge body is highly mixed and inconclusive.