Nairobi, Feb. 16 -- Since the pandemic, offices around the world havequietly shrunk. Many organisations don't need as much floor space or as many desks, given many staff now do a mix ofhybridwork from home and the office.

But on days when more staff are required to be in, office spaces can feel noticeably busier and noisier. Despite so much focus on getting workers back into offices, there has been far less focus on the impacts of returning to open-plan workspaces.

Now, moreresearchconfirms what many suspected: our brains have to work harder in open-plan spaces than in private offices.

In arecently published study, researchers at a Spanish university fitted 26 people, aged in their mid-20s to mid-60s, with wireless electroencephalogram...