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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
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.
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
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.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
People who always bitch about it being "too cold" and try to get the temp increased are one of my big pet peeves.
and it's ignorant clods like you that make my GF's work life difficult.
she has Reynauds, a condition tha tcan cut off the circulation in her fingers if exposed to low temperatures... Yes a half hour in of 67 degree temperatures WILL trigger this condition. Many other people also have circulation problems.
Her last boss was so stupid that it took us filing for disability for her on his ass as well as a lawsuit on him for creating a hostile work environment before he turned the temperature back up to 70.
Maybe these people "bitching" have a real reason.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
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.
"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.