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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?"
Which is why I doubt the AC is gonna be lowered anytime soon. It would be a battle between HR and upper management, and while certainly a glorious battle it would be, uppper management usually wins.
100% of the time? Does this seem a little high to anyone else? Don't people take breaks for bathroom, /., etc?
It's worth pointing out that perhaps the most productive university in the entire world in the field of astronomy is the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
It is just a coincidence? Astronomers/Astrophysicists always seem to know where to build the best ground-based telescopes (Hawaii, Chile, the Canary Islands...)
I get tired faster when it's warm. Also, my contacts tend to start losing focus, which happens when I'm very tired - so I feel like sleeping.
I work best when it's cooler - about 65-68. I also prefer a darker environment and plenty of rest. Since I'm a night owl, trying to force my sleep rhythm to match the office hours isn't very productive.
At my job we must wear an undershirt and a dress shirt or polo or sweater. We also have to wear socks and shoes, never sandals, and are disallowed shorts. 25 C would be unbearable and would make most of us doze off. 20 C is much more acceptable. However, the women there complain that it's cold unless it hirts 27 C. Go figure.
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Then why do I have a bloody fan on my desk that's on all year?
I don't know about anyone else, but a warm office really hurts my productivity. Heck, when the A/C goes out, I think more about the temperature than the job at hand. It's also unpleasant coming into the office after doing a little bit of exercise, and spending the next 20 minutes wiping all the sweat off. Plus, warm offices feel somewhat stuffy.
Personally, I know some offices are nice and chilly, and it can hurt productivity, but too warm is probably a lot worse than too cold. (Too warm - get a fan - if you're still hot, tough. Too cold - a heater, sweater, anything - when you're warm enough (or feeling hot), take it off.
Then again, maybe I'm weird to prefer cooler weather. Me, like airplanes, like cold air... not hot (and possibly humid) air.
What are these people wearing? T-shirt and shorts?
Many workplaces require slacks and a collared shirt. Add an undershirt and I'm good for 70F.
We had an issue with our AC for a while and had to deal with 80F temps. We complained and complained to get it to 70-72F.
Isn't "room temp" 72F/22C ??
When the office temperature in a month-long study increased from 68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit, typing errors fell by 44 percent and typing output jumped 150 percent.
Those data don't warrant the conclusion "Warm Offices Boost Productivity."
The improvement could simply be a result of the change. The gains might not be sustained over time. Lowering the temperature another 3 degrees six weeks later could also yield an improvement.
A change is as good as a holiday.
Warmth may seem great when you lack it but then the same can be said for coolness.
Interestingly enought, they keep the air temp in hospitals cold for that exact reason. The cold snap helps keep the Docs on edge.
No correlation of humidity on productivity. And secondly, the study tests workers in Florida who are aclimated to much warmer temperatures. 68 F is freezing to southerners but is okay for northerners as long as you don't engage in any physical activity.
In the new building where I work IT has it's own closed off area so we can work in peace and harmony. Only problem is, to save money, the CEO decided IT doesn't need it own thermostat. One half of the room is controller by a thermostat down the hall in the IT manager's office, and the other half of the room is controller by the thermostat on the other side of the building in the accounting department's office right under a heating vent. I tell you... we either freeze to death or sweat our guts out. One of the girls here generally moves into the server room to do her work during the winter. At any rate, I was pretty miffed about IT having to suffer like this - I've had a cold non-stop for about the past year and half - just to save a few dollars on building costs. I'm forwarding this article to the powers that be and hope they take it to heart before I die of pneumonia.
I had an astrophysics prof in college from India who said in class, I kid you not, "It is very warm in here. It puts you to sleep. Maybe that is why the cooler northern countries have been historically more advanced industrially." Dunno if there is any truth to that but it certainly woke me up.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Any warmer than that and I'd be falling asleep. Certainly /my/ productivity goes way down when I'm asleep.
you shouldn't feel sleepy if you get enough sleep in the first place.
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I'm at my most productive when I'm in Antarctica. I'm going to be a lone coder for the first winter over at Dome C, starting next months.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
There was a study decades ago where IQ tests were administered at different temperatures. It turned out we're smartest (as measured by those tests, anyhow) at about 45 degrees F, and decline above that.
Then again, intelligence may not correlate with the urge to produce. Wasn't there that study out a few weeks back showing that monkeys were more "productive" at a repetitive task if their neuronal reward circuits were disabled? Those who still experienced the pleasure of reward would put off work until just before the reward was anticipated, while those without the pleasure would just keep working no matter when.
So maybe warm = stupid = less feeling of accomplishment, but "paradoxically" if you're performing some drone task may make the boss very happy with the consequences.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Why can't they just shut the heat off completely and rely on the CPUs and monitors to heat the room? Just tell the workers to deal with it and wear extra layers. Its good on the heating bill and keeps the PCs nice and chilly. Think about it, cooler temps help the PCs run better, and makes it so that they break less often (except with n00bs who dont RTFM) thus saving money on PC repair and replacement. So as you can see, keeping the ofice cooler is better on the budget in the long run.
One of my uncles was a union negociator. He was called whenever the discussions between management and unions went south and his job was to mend things.
Once, he was called in a machine shop where workers had gone on strike after fighting with management over apparently irrelevant issues.
After peeling the various layers of gripes, it became clear that tempers had flared for no real discernable reason. And then, my uncle noticed something: It was really warm in the floor (this was in the winter).
It turned out that the temperature for both the machine floor and the offices were controlled by a thermostat that was in the office of the boss' secretary, an older woman who liked it warm.
The thermostat was moved to the floor, the boss got a space heater for her secretary, and the work relationships improved markedly.
So maybe this study is relevant for nine female underactive office clerks. But put machine shop workers wearing their full security attire in a 77F environment, and they will mill your butt off!
--
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Um, I officially want to call bullshit on this on behalf of all men on the planet stuck in offices that are blisteringly hot...because of women who DO NOT LIKE TO BE COLD.
This study should've gone further and broken down the data on gender, because I have yet to find a guy in the various offices that I've worked in that thought the temps in the office were TOO COLD to WORK PRODUCTIVELY.
On the contrary, I've had nearly drop-down-dragged-out fights with the ladies in offices where I've worked because of the thermostat. No -- I'm not a violent man -- I'm not putting smackdown on cold female co-workers. I'm talking about insidious "cold war" (no pun intended) tactics -- surreptitiously bumping UP/DOWN the thermostat on the way to the can; taking informal "polls" asking how COLD people think the office is; etc.
The only way I've found to combat the never ending "cold ware" in my office is to basically lay down the equivalent of mutually assured grossing out. I basically tell the ladies in the office whining about the cold that I can either take of my shirt to stay cool and let them turn up the heat, or they can put on more clothing.
Man boobs are a powerful weapon in the hands of the right male.
IronChefMorimoto
"At 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the workers were keyboarding 100 percent of the time with a 10 percent error rate, but at 68 degrees, their keying rate went down to 54 percent of the time with a 25 percent error rate,"
The workstations had monitoring equipment fitted, the people knew what was going on (well, you wouldn't miss the temperature varying from 68 to 77, would you) and they worked out an appropriate response. Well, nearly appropriate -- that 100% could only be believed by someone with a very pointy head or by someone in a very high ivory tower.
Most people in the USA grow up with air conditioners and/or heaters set to such a narrow temperature range that they can not adapt to the natural changes in outdoor temperature.
I grew up not using too much air conditioning or heating and I can survive a much wider range of temperatures than most people around me. I usually only need a windbreaker to fight wind chill when temperatures drop to the 40's (5-10 Celsius). I set my thermostat to the mid to low 60's when it gets colder. I have no AC, but I can survive 90+ temperatures just fine now. Human beings can condition themselves to the wider range of temperature. My parents moved from place to place so I grew up on a tropical island, and then moved to a colder climate and I'm able to adjust to either just fine.
I see too many children overprotected by their overzealous parents. You see kids bundled up and completely enshrouded by scarves, hats and mittens when the temperature drops to 65 Degrees(18 Celsius) I wonder how many parents ask their children if they are too cold or too hot before they dress them. Kids aren't stupid. Stop treating them as if they are stupid. They know if they're too cold and if they're too hot.
If she's too cold then the bitch should wear more clothes to work. Ever heard of gloves??
I'd like to see a similar study done for classrooms, especially now that all kinds of data is being gathered and "drilled down." Maybe it would convince my school to maintain a normal temperature in my frigid classroom. Actually my classroom is frigid when it's warmer out and hot when it's colder. The climate control has no middle ground. not that the little box on the wall in my room has anything to do with the temperature.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Listen, that stupid cunt of a girlfriend of his is the one that should have to make sacrifices. Cut the fingertips off the gloves. Or glue little thimble-like plastic thingies to the fingertips of the gloves. But oh no, we all have to turn the temperature up because Princess Is Cold. What a stupid cunt. I hate these bitches.
It's not entirely unlike the placebo effect, although I'd stop short of equating the two.
One way in which it differs is that the Hawthorne effect is somewhat more conscious. Workers know that working faster will lead to increased productivity. They consciously can change the outcome. A patient getting a placebo effect doesn't know what "muscles" he's flexing, or which attitudes he's affecting that are causing his healing to speed up.
So in other words:
Hawthorne effect: The subject knows he's being tested, and knows how to change the outcome, and so he changes it.
Placebo effect: The subject knows he's being tested, but he doesn't know how to change the outcome, but manages to change it subconsiously anyway.
The Placebo effect is somewhat more "mysterious". I'd like to see some people study it to learn the mechanism behind it. There's got to be something interesting going on there.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.