Have you been sick much this winter? Your office layout may be to blame, scientists have said.

They carried out a study on the link between the layout of different workplaces and the rate of sick leave among the people who worked there.

The study involved almost 2,000 employees working in seven different types of office. The scientists looked at the total number of sick days taken by employees, and the amount of short-term and long-term illnesses they had experienced.

The study found that illness tended to be more rampant in open-plan offices. In fact, there was a ‘significant excess risk' of short-term sick leave in three different types of open-plan offices, particularly among women.

Sick leave among men and short-term sick leave in general was found to be more prevalent in ‘flex offices' - these are open-plan offices with no individual workstations and some meeting rooms.

"Traditional open-plan offices are less good for employee health," the scientists from Stockholm said.

While the reasons for this are unclear, they suggested that aside from the risk of infection, environmental stresses may play a big role, such as the lack of ‘visual privacy', being exposed to ‘irrelevant sound' and having little control over personal space.

The scientists called for further research on this topic.

"With such knowledge of the office environment's influence on different dimensions of employee health, important gains can be achieved in the long run," they suggested.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, Ergonomics.