Lisanne Bergefurt’s dissertation “The physical workplace as a resource for mental health” aimed to provide holistic insights in the relationships between the physical office-and home-workplace characteristics and mental health. Using a mixed-method approach, with systematic literature reviews, cross-sectional data analyses, a virtual reality experiment, and a field experiment, these insights were obtained.
The dissertation initially introduces ten indicators of mental health, representing a range of short-term, transient, to long-term, chronic consequences, and from negative to positive feelings and states. Systematic literature reviews show that for both the office and the home, most research has focused on indoor environmental quality (IEQ) aspects (e.g., temperature and ventilation) in relation to productivity, while the more tacit or salutogenic aspects (e.g., views outside or plants), and the chronic consequences (e.g., burnout and depression) received less attention.
Therefore, the VR experiment focused on the potential positive influence of tacit office design aspects (e.g., plants, views outside, and color use) on the workplace experience. Low-cost interventions, such as placing more plants or changing wall colors could already improve the perception of the workplace, and potentially mental health. In the longitudinal field experiment, the influence of implementing sound masking on the speech intelligibility and mental health of office workers is explored, using a control and intervention group. Findings show that sound masking could significantly reduce speech intelligibility and improve short-term mental health outcomes.
In short, this dissertation has shown that, apart from monitoring the indoor climate of the workplace, other design interventions could be used to promote employees’ mental health too. Most importantly, the workplace design should be fitted to the needs of employees. By optimizing the fit, the workplace will be ready for a new era of healthy, and potentially hybrid working.
The thesis can be accessed here and refers to the list of papers published in journals: 20231218_Bergefurt_hf.pdf (tue.nl)