Office Work Innovation: What about Wellbeing?

Abstract

Offices nowadays are looking very attractive: design furniture, trendy colours, fancy lighting, art objects and even an ecological touch. These offices are often linked to new ways of working, further explained by concepts such as flex work, telework, shared office work, cloud work etc. But what are the effects of these changing environments on the wellbeing of the workers? And do these trendy offices really increase ergonomics at work? In this paper, first a brief history on the development and evolution of office environments is given. Furthermore, an analysis of some pitfalls in today’s offices is presented. For each pitfall, some advice is given on how to reduce the problems.