Lowering the setting of an office thermostat during the winter is a false economy.
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Warm workers work better, an ergonomics study at Cornell University finds.
Chilly workers not only make more errors but cooler temperatures could increase a worker's hourly labor cost by 10 percent, estimates Alan Hedge, professor of design and environmental analysis and director of Cornell's Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory.
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. Hedge's study was exploring the link between changes in the physical environment and work performance.
"The results of our study also suggest raising the temperature to a more comfortable thermal zone saves employers about $2 per worker, per hour," says Hedge, who presented his findings this summer at the 2004 Eastern Ergonomics Conference and Exposition in New York City.
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. The researchers recorded the amount of time that employees keyboarded and the amount of time they spent making error corrections. Hedge used a new research approach employing software that can synchronize a specific indoor environmental variable, in this case temperature, with productivity.
"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," Hedge says. "Temperature is certainly a key variable that can impact performance."
One lesson of this study is that conservation should be done with better technology (e.g. better insulation) and not by making people suffer more extreme variations in temperature.
What is even more interesting here is the idea that there must be some optimal room temperature for productivity. Does anyone know whether psychometric studies of human intelligence have been conducted under a range of environmental conditions? Is there an optimal room temperature range for IQ? If so, what is that range?
By Randall Parker at 2004 October 25 02:29 PM Brain Enhancement | TrackBackThere have been many studies of optimal room temperature for productivity and there are some pretty widely agreed on standards.
HOWEVER, they vary depending on:
1. What sort of work you are doing, heavy physical labour favours about 18°, light manual labour about 20°, office work about 22°C.
2. What the temperature is like outside. In the winter people get used to lower temperatures.
3. Time of day, how tired people are, etc etc.
I would expect optimal temperature to vary depending on race. For example, some genetic differences have been demonstrated for Scandinavians, where some of their body processes are less efficient, thus generating more waste heat to keep them warm.
Patri,
I agree with you about the likelihood of racial differences and even of differences at finer levels of granularity. This creates a problem for workplaces. It may make sense to set the temperature for those who function best in cooler environments and let the rest put on more clothes to keep warm. Or it might make sense to set up multiple microclimates in a large office.
I wonder if there is an easy way to test individual ideal temperatures. It probably varies as a function of how much fat and muscle one has as well as thyroid level and genetics. The genetic differences are probably mostly in oxidative phosporylation enzymes that work in mitochondria.
I once worked in a building where one end of it was at a lower lighting level. I managed to get moved into a cubicle at that end since I didn't like the bright glare of flourescent lights.
In Hong Kong we have the opposite problem ... the A/C everywhere is set at a disagreeably low level. This might make some sense in shops at street level, so that people will walk by on a hot and humid day, feel the cool breeze, and stop in the shop to have a look around. But in the middle of an office tower, it gets very annoying. Plenty of people wear windbreakers, sweaters and coats in the office, then taking them off before going outside. But the trouble is, we can't decrease the ferocity of the A/C (and thus save money) since there will always be some people (someone whose ancestors came from Northern China or another freezing place) will complain very loudly and sweat very profusely.
Maybe it would be rational for our company to discriminate against non-tropical people so that we can lessen the A/C bill and make the rest of the workers happy at the same time.
Winters in Paris can get pretty chilly: freezing temps are pretty much the norm between nov. and march. Yet the heating system here is pretty bad. I live in a north-oriented room which gets zero sunlight during the day, so temperature barely reaches 16 C in months like october and april when the heating is off! It's appaling, I'd kill for a mid seventies room! (about 22-23 C) I can't work and I have a sore throat and fever quite often during fall and spring! Sometimes I "snake" out to get a bit of sun!
Date: 12/09/05
I'm sorry, but this conclusion makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Currently it is 76 degrees in my office and I am absolutely roasting and can hardly think of anything but how hot I am! This is hardly conducive to effiency. And I work in a building where I have no control over the thermastat.
If someone wants to warm up they can put on a sweater, or even wear a hat - since most heat is lost through the head. Or they can wear those little gloves that have the open fingertips.
But if you're too warm, there's not much that can be done, especially if you've taken off all you can short of indecent exposure!
Someone will probably say get a fan! I say, get a heater or put on a sweater!