workplace·Published 2024-06
Proximity of Employee Workstation to Office Ping-Pong Table and Employee Tenure: An Inverse Relationship
Principal investigator: Dr. Augustus Crane, Director of Advisory Services.
Employees whose workstations are closer to the office ping-pong table have shorter tenures with the organization.
Methodology
Eight hundred and ninety-four employees across 67 organizations with at least one in-office ping-pong table were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. Workstation distance from the nearest ping-pong table was measured by Institute fellows using a calibrated laser distance tool during off-hours visits arranged with facilities management. Employee tenure was drawn from HR records provided by each organization under a data sharing agreement that required the Institute to hold the data for no more than twelve months, a condition the Institute is in the process of reviewing.
Funding disclosure: Funded by the Institute's Workplace Design Research Fund. No table tennis equipment manufacturer was involved in the study design, though one was sent a courtesy copy of the findings.
Instruments cited in this study
Full citation
Crane, A. (2024). Proximity of Employee Workstation to Office Ping-Pong Table and Employee Tenure: An Inverse Relationship. Institute for the Study of Pointless Metrics. r = -0.75, p < 0.001, n = 894.