News: more than half of employees prefer a private work space, while open-plan office workers often experience too many distractions to work effectively, according to new data.

Research commissioned by British office equipment company Expert Market found that 54 per cent of workers would prefer to work in separate offices, while 65 per cent said that lack of natural light negatively impacted their mood.

"Employees reported that the open-plan design of many offices encouraged a negative sense of competition between staff and a hostile working environment that pitted colleagues against each other," said a statement from Expert Market.

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"Peace and quiet came out top on the list of things which could improve employees' working day the most, with over 37 per cent of respondents preferring a quiet office over regular breaks and even cake," it added. "In the quest to boost team morale through a relaxed and less formal environment, companies may have achieved quite the opposite."

The report follows on from research published in September by office furniture specialists Steelcase and research company IPSOS, which found that insufficient privacy in the workplace was a worldwide problem.

The survey of 10,500 workers in Europe, North America and Asia found that over 85 per cent of employees were dissatisfied with their office environment and were struggling to concentrate.

Respondents were losing up to 86 minutes per day to distractions, and 31 per cent reported they had to leave their offices to complete their work due to lack of private space.

The 11 per cent of workers who had more privacy and were more satisfied with their workplace overall were also the most engaged.

Disengagement in the workplace and subsequent loss of productivity is currently estimated to cost American companies up to $550 billion and UK companies up to £70 billion a year.

The results formed part of a wider report in Steelcase's 360 magazine, which said that 70 per cent of office space in the USA was now open-plan in some form, while the amount of space designated to each worker has more than halved.

"We expected that in countries like China, which has a very collectivist culture, privacy might be less of a need than in countries like the United States, where individualism is prized. But what we discovered is that people all over the world want privacy at times," said Wenli Wang, who conducted Steelcase's privacy research in China. "In different cultures, they may seek it primarily for different reasons and in ways that are permitted in their culture, but the need for privacy sometimes — at work as well as in public — is as important to people as is the need to be with others."

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Research released earlier this year by Canada Life Group Insurance also found that open-plan office workers were more than twice as likely to take sick days than home workers and were almost six times as likely to believe their working environment promoted stress.

Last year, Dezeen reported on a workplace survey by architecture firm Gensler, which found that new office technologies and a move towards collaborative, open-plan offices were damaging the performance of employees.

Workplace effectiveness in the USA had fallen by six per cent in just five years.

"Just because you can see your colleagues doesn't mean you’re going to collaborate with them," said Matthew Kobylar, regional workplace practice area leader at Gensler. "Open-plan is quite effective as a general space but there are times when you need to focus on collaboration, and it fails to support that."