There are lots of reasons open offices are bad, but, as you might expect, germs are one of them. This big survey found that sick days are 62% higher in open offices than individual offices. Even group offices are better, six person rooms have 30% less sick days than open plans. pic.twitter.com/q3cHT6AEyq

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) August 18, 2021

Wow, that is a huge difference. Even if open offices resulted in more productivity than regular office plans (which they do not), the increase in sick days more than negates that notional productivity gain.