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Warm Offices Boost Productivity
bluelip writes "It looks like the real reason for offshoring is corporations looking for warmer weather. Instead of paying the energy bills to crank up the heat in the office to a more productive temperature, the offices are moving to warmer areas. This article shows a 44% error reduction and 150% increase in productivity for those working in warmer offices. Will this increase in output be enough to convince my boss to pay for us to vacation-commute from a tropical island?"
...but it does nothing to help with cold fingers. And when my fingers get cold, they get stiff. When my fingers get stiff, I can't type as well.
Common sense, really.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Were they studying offices full of women only? Seriously. Women love to play with the office furnistat, even if they've been told not to 100 times.
The worst thing in the world is to be working in an office that's too warm. It's just horrible.
Here's a secret people: if you're too cold, wear warming clothing! If I'm too hot, I can't take off all of my clothes (and keep my job).
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
Studies like this are as old as the hills, but horribly inaccurate.
In the end, if you wish to increase productivity dim the lights. And monitor the results, productivity will go up. Increase the lighting a week later, productivity will again go up. Keep this up until productivity exceeds 100% efficiency.
I'm only half kidding.
I am quite the opposite, as warm or hot weather makes me unable to focus...
Between 18 and 16 Degrees Celsuis are perfect for me, then again, I do live in Canada.
When temperatures are colder im concerned with warming up, not with working. I think the idea behind this article is you work better in a more comfortable office, not that the more you crank up the heat the more you work.
I work in an office that gets very cold during the fall and winter and I have noticed that my typing speed decreases dramatically when my hands are cold.
In the study, which was conducted at Insurance Office of America's headquarters in Orlando, Fla., each of nine workstations was equipped with a miniature personal environment-sensor for sampling air temperature every 15 minutes.
Wow, what a meaningful sample size.
That, and the references to keyboards and accuracy makes it sound like it's purely a study of a typing pool to me. Probably female, probably requiring little in the way of creative/critical thinking, just a cosy space to get on with the tiresome task of earning a dollar.
This passes for 'research'...? Oh dear.
77 is horrible if you're wearing a T-Shirt, a dress-shirt, and a tie. Keep it at 70 or lower. If people are cold, too bad: they can wear more clothes. People who always bitch about it being "too cold" and try to get the temp increased are one of my big pet peeves. My dorm rooms were always scorching, even in the winter. Damn Temperature Fascists.
Since telescopes are built on remote hilltops as far away from human activity (light and vibration polution), it makes sense to put them on remote volcanic islands.
It also means that those living on the islands also have a better view of the cosmos. Also on the islands, people can study astronomy all year round, in other places, you usually have to go on a specially arranged visit, they can just look out of their window.
Thats just common sense. Its like saying the best igloo building university is in Alaska.
liqbase
25 degrees C is uncomfortably warm if you're wearing a shirt and tie, or full battle gear (suit), as is typical of my law firm and many other professional groups.
But 25 degrees C is damn perfect if you're wearing comfortable clothing, like shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. By no coincidence, I'm most productive when I'm comfortable, which includes how I'm dressed.
I hope that this starts a trend back to more casual dress. We were headed there in 1999, but the shock waves of the .com bust produced a backlash to heavy, formal clothing. Hopefully we can resurrect the previous trend.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
At one office I worked in, my hands would become almost immobile and typing was often difficult.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
A sedentary job at 68degrees is a nightmare. Just cool enough to not have the shivers kick in until you have been chilled to the bone. The cold sort of sneaks up on you. I'd prefer 58, as the urge to grab a coat and a cup of coffee is immediate. Now when I moved furniture for a living, 68 was PERFECT weather (you had to actually do something before working up a sweat).
I'd also guess that this study was comprised of mostly women. Women tend to be lighter (less body mass), and be comfortable at a slightly higher temperature than men. I would find 77 to be a sweltering hell after about 4 or 5 hours. Winter in my house is always interesting, as my wife wants the thermostat on 80 and I try to find a room with an open window.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
productivity increased indirectly merely by changing the work environment.
I was actually wondering if anyone else had mentioned this, sometimes called the Hawthorne Effect. However, it seems you have the summarization a little wrong.
It's generally believed that productivity didn't increase because their environment was changing; productivity went up because they knew they were being studied, and/or that management cared about them enough to look. Remember that the Hawthorne study was one of the forerunners in the wild new theory that increasing productivity might have something to do with employees, not machinery.
It's not entirely unlike the placebo effect, although I'd stop short of equating the two.
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suwain_2
In the slides, it's pretty clear that office temperature increased throughout the day on average, while errors decreased throughout the day. How do they know this isn't more about awakeness than than temperature?
Large scale data collection in the field is great, but you gotta make up for in analysis all the precautions you didn't take during experimental design....
The responses on this thread just illustrate perfectly the degree of brainwashing of most Americans. The corporate regime has been able to get Americans to go along with the idea that everyone should spend their lives working hard just like little hamsters on their wheels, little rats running their mazes.
Americans should see America as a business, but one where THEY are the owners, and not the worker drones. Do you see business owners worrying about how "productive" they are, about how many words per minute THEY type? Instead of worrying about helping the corporate plantation squeeze as much work as possible out of ourselves, we should be thinking about how America can be organized so that we have as little work to do as possible.
Life is finite, people....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
2 comments
1. Honeywell, top maker of vac units and controls recommends temperatures of 76-78 degrees for low-activity office environments; check out the website they offer a very handy climate tool. This is also right on keel with the energy department's guidelines.
2. How many of the people complain that this is too warm:
a. are overweight, or
b. smoke, or
c. drink warm beverages and not the recommended 8 glasses of water a day, or
d. have high blood pressure, or
e. feel sleepy because they aren't getting the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep at night, or
f. not interested in what they are doing enough to stay awake.
It's a darn shame that healthy, wealthy, and wise people who have a controlled and healthy life need to be concerned with too cold at work and suffer because of any combination above.
I think the reason that the northern countries are historically more advanced in industry is because of the season cycle. In a tropical area, there is rarely a food shortage. You can harvest what you want, when you want it.
In a cooler climate, where nothing grows during the winter, you'd better have that supply of food built up-- Or you'll starve. It's a simple matter of necessity.
However, when my fingers are cold, I cannot type very well. But when they're warm, they just fly across the keyboard!
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If that were true, then why isn't there a corresponding set of industrially advanced countries in the cool south?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Suit wearers are definitely one group keeping the temperature set low, but there is a larger factor at play.
I think the major reason offices are intentionally kept cold and drafty is that the vast majority of office workers drink coffee. I've worked in several different offices, some large, some small. I was always getting cold sitting still in my chair all day and ended up wearing several layers of clothing. I actually kept a sweater at the office because I didn't need it anywhere else. I eventually realised that one thing myself and all the other sweater wearers had in common was that we didn't drink coffee like the everybody else in the office.
The funniest moment after this realisation was watching three coffee drinkers ponder curiousely over our cold problem while sipping their drinks. "Maybe there's a draft over his desk?", "It could be that window he's next to...", "I bet he has bad circulation, old people get like that.", and so on. All the while sipping their fourth daily cup of a hot drink they new full well we stayed away from.
There may be other reasons, but if you see somebody at an office bundled up or just shivering in their seat, I'll bet you 2 to 1 odds they're one of the few who don't take the office drug regularily.
From personnal experience, it might not be because of the temperature per se, but rather WHERE the temperature is warmer. :-)
I live in Canada, and in the winter months, I hardly see any sunshine. I noticed that people tend to become less energetic during those times.
In comparison, some time ago I lived in Japan for several years and in the winter months, especially in Tokyo, the sky was invariably bright blue in the morning. I don't know about everyone else, but the mood of peoples around me was very different. (Of course, in Tokyo, during the rainy season, people get just as down as canadians do in winter....)
I thought it was more interesting that they performed the test in Florida. People down there have a much different idea of cold than those of us up north. My brain shuts down when it gets to 77, but they seem to find it quite comfortable.
I've got a mind like a steel trap - it's got an animal's foot stuck in it.
"It looks like the real reason for offshoring is corporations looking for warmer weather."
Why does every third Slashdot story have to contain some sophomoric, contentious and/or unfounded sentence in the lead-in? These sorts of things generate, as a rule, a huge amount of off-topic flaming and often frame the actual article in question in a distorted light ("Ask Unix Co-Creator (sic) Rob Pike"). It'd be nice if there was a little less raw opinion and random editorializing splattered across the actual stories. It's only a few lines; for heaven's sake try to be a little professional.
This has to be the most useless study ever conducted.
Most of the time it's so hot in India it drains you so much you simply cannot work to full capacity (esp in an IT job) without an AC.
I know the difference an air conditioner made for me.
Maybe instead of spending money on this study this guy should have tried to get a job in New Delhi or attend University in Pune, where I've given college tests in 40+ C (105 F). Or he could have gone to South US (Texas, Florida).
I also know the difference since coming to Pennsylvania. When the heatings not fully on and its 55F in the house, you can bundle up and tap away at your keyboard... Freezing temperatures simply do not sap your strength like the heat. You can bundle up and spend hours outside in snowy weather but you won't feel tired when you get home. Not so when its 35+ outside.
Every try cycling/running in cold weather ? I've used my bike in 10F and let me tell you its a lot more comfortable than cycling in 100F.
Humans need comfortable temperatures to do their best.(duh!) But I would prefer it to be cold outside and use heating indoors than the other way round. Atleast one can go outdoors...
There are some Canadians in my friends office in India. Their first few days are spent exclaiming "Ooooh ! its so nice and warm here!". This does not last for more than a few weeks...then they go back to jumping in a cooled car and hiding in a cooled office.
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