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?"

Too warm?

[Tomahawk (1343)]

68F = 20C
77F = 25C
(for those of use that use Celcius)

25C/77F is very warm. I prefer to work around 21C/70F. Any warmer than that and I'd be falling asleep. Certainly /my/ productivity goes way down when I'm asleep.

T.

Re:Too warm?

[lukewarmfusion (726141)]

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.

Re:Too warm?

[francisew (611090)]

In my lab it's often below 17C / 62F or above 27C / 80F.

No wonder it takes us so long to graduate...

Snooze

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

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.

Re:Snooze

[Dr. Evil (3501)]

Whether the root cause is food or not, I don't know, but in Britain, labour was relatively expensive, wheras in India, labour was cheap.

So, if you're running a textile business, and you need to power a fabric loom, you have India do all the work with their manual looms and skilled workforce.

Domestic work would of course be more profitable, but there aren't nearly as many skilled people working the looms in Britain.

Slavery inhibited this need in the Roman empire, but in Britian, it was nowhere near as prevalent... not enough slaves.

...so somebody figured out that you could get more work out of people if you began using water-powered looms, then steam powered looms, then you used British government to restrict the sales of cheaper and superior Indian textiles, finally forcing Indians to buy more expensive, inferior textiles from Britain...

Slavery might have inhibitied this need in the Americas, but one thing came with the American conquerors that the Romans never had... guns. The development, sale and distribution of firearms was a technological boon for the Americas. Then came the railway... this covered the creation of a coal-engine-fine machinery industry across the country which could be tapped for both skills and resources to create new technologies like the wireless and so forth.

When the British machinery was used in the U.S., the need for slavery or slave-wages was reduced and eventually eliminated, only the most unscrupulous designer labels practicing slavery or wage-slavery today.

But food probably does play a part in dictating why there was so much cheap labour in India v.s. Britain, it's tough to say... it's just as remarkable to look at why Rome didn't develop modern technology as why Britain and the Americas did.

Re:Too warm?

[Larsie (740598)]

This is completely counter-intuitive. Scandinavian employees are much more productive than their mediteranean counterparts.

I myself prefer a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius.

Re:Too warm?

[KDan (90353)]

Yes, I agree too. That sounds like a totally stupid study. Maybe they should mention what sort of work they were doing. If the work was to collect drops of sweat in a bucket, then 25 would definitely be more productive. For programming, at 25 my brain slows down to zero and I keep on losing track of what I'm doing, and end up spending all my time browsing the web.

It shouldn't be cold enough to shiver, but it definitely shouldn't be warm either!

Daniel

Re:Too warm?

[Frnknstn (663642)]

They did, RTFA.

The only type of 'work' they tested was typing. This does cause one to question the validity of the sweeping productivity statements made.

Still, I definately work best at around 25deg C. The freezing office I work in makes my fingers to stiff to type properly.

Re:Too warm?

[NeoSkandranon (515696)]

Back in highschool we had a couple converts from florida (in western NC) in band...out marching we would rejoice (we being the native NC'ers) when it got down in the low 70s because you could bust ass and not break a sweat...the two new kids were in ski jackets by then.

OTOH they took the heat much better

Re:Too warm?

[tambo (310170)]

For programming, at 25 my brain slows down to zero and I keep on losing track of what I'm doing, and end up spending all my time browsing the web.

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

Re:Too warm?

[Tomahawk (1343)]

Google does that all for you do.

Do a Google search for
'convert 77F to C'

And it will convert almost everything as well.

T.

Re:Too warm?

[david.given (6740)]

And it will convert almost everything as well.

> CONVERT LEAD INTO GOLD

Definition of convert - WordReference.com Dictionary...

Darn. And I thought Google could do everything.

Re:Temperature Fascists

[cyberlotnet (182742)]

I agree with you 100%

My motto is very simple

When its cold you can always put on more clothes.
When its hot you can only take off so much before your arrested!

Re:Temperature Fascists

[Lumpy (12016)]

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.

Are you all insane??

[itistoday (602304)]

Here in Florida I'm lucky if my AC can handle keeping the temperature at 78! For us, 85 is warm, and 75 is a comfortable cool. You pampered bastards...

Re:Too warm?

[egomaniac (105476)]

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.

a: no
b: no
c: the 8 glasses of water a day thing is an urban legend [snopes.com]
d: no
e: no
f: no

And yet I'm comfortable at 70F and miserable at 78F. Furthermore, if you're cold, you can dress warmer. If I'm hot, my options are much more limited -- stripping naked at one's workplace tends to have negative repurcussions.

Bundling up is an option...

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

...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.

omg, Canada is doomed!

[theluckyleper (758120)]

Or perhaps Canadians should just wait for global warming to kick in, and reap the 44% in error reduction rewards!

Go burn those fossil fuels, Canucks!

The Suits

[dykofone (787059)]

I always assumed offices were so cold to keep all of the "suits" comfortable as they went about their corporate level day. I know I'd certainly be sweating having to wear a coat inside while showing some Japanese investors around.

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.

Warm = Productivity??

[Egonis (155154)]

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.

100%

[slimak (593319)]

At 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the workers were keyboarding 100 percent of the time...

100% of the time? Does this seem a little high to anyone else? Don't people take breaks for bathroom, /., etc?

Re:100%

[mesach (191869)]

It makes sense to me, they wanna get thier work done and get the fuck outta the room!

That's it...

[Rorschach1 (174480)]

I'm forwarding this on to my facility manager. It's freaking COLD in here! And it's not just in the winter that it's cold - it's ALWAYS cold in here. Someone decided to put a ton of servers in the next room, and the servers like it cold, but guess what? There's no way to isolate the two areas. Yeah, it affects productivity - we're always huddling around our space heaters shivering rather than typing.

Oh, and now we're not supposed to have space heaters. Thank God for surplus AlphaServers...

Obligatory offshore joke

[Chagatai (524580)]

Will this increase in output be enough to convince my boss to pay for us to vacation-commute from a tropical island?

No, but welcome your new office in sunny Bangalore, where the temps often exceed 100F and humidity reigns!

Really?

[tlhIngan (30335)]

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.

This is old news

[sckienle (588934)]

From Article: 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.

This is a well-known phenomenon, first seen in the Hawthorne studies [analytictech.com]. One of the first productivity studies was in a factory where the researcher first reduced the light, and productivity increased; then the researcher increased the light, and productivity still increased. The end result is that worker productivity increased indirectly merely by changing the work environment.

Maybe that's why we keep getting reorganized....

Re:This is old news

[maxwell demon (590494)]

One of the first productivity studies was in a factory where the researcher first reduced the light, and productivity increased; then the researcher increased the light, and productivity still increased.

So the most efficient environment is one with a flickering light?

Re:This is old news

[suwain_2 (260792)]

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.

Warm Office=Faster Typing

[ThurstonMoore (605470)]

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.

Sample size

[the_twisted_pair (741815)]

From the article:
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.

Conclusion unwarranted

[wombatmobile (623057)]

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.

Cold hands can't type

[upsidedown_duck (788782)]

At one office I worked in, my hands would become almost immobile and typing was often difficult.

Reminds me of idea

[Apreche (239272)]

I had this idea a while ago. That I should make a software company that has no office building. It would consists of a cabana, lots of really comfortable beach chairs, a big safe to store important stuffs in, and a wire box with network/server and a WAP. All the employees would lounge about by the pool, or in the pool with waterproof laptops, doing work and connecting via wireless.

I mean seriously, what beats coding on the beach? And customers would love to do business with us even if we charged more than the competition. I think its a winner. Every day will be Hawaiian shirt day.

Warmer offices is politically correct term for...

[FerretFrottage (714136)]

sweatshops...hence the productivity increase.

Sedentary jobs

[Shotgun (30919)]

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.

This article could be a life saver

[forgetmenot (467513)]

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.

Tropical brain power

[overmeer (823768)]

See this is why hawaiians can come up with things like a G4 emulator at 80% host speed.

Spin that wheel, run that ratrace, little rodent!

[Cryofan (194126)]

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....

Quite the opposite

[dargaud (518470)]

I'm at my most productive when I'm in Antarctica [gdargaud.net]. I'm going to be a lone coder for the first winter over at Dome C [gdargaud.net], starting next months.

Hot Offices

[nurb432 (527695)]

Too much heat gives me headaches and causes co-workers to spend time complaining its too hot.. Doesnt improve anything...

"warm" as an abstract word is useless..

Strike caused by temperature!

[SysKoll (48967)]

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!

Overly flip stuff in every Slashdot lead-in

[OnanTheBarbarian (245959)]

"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.

21 Celcius or 70 farenheit is optimal

[SergeyKurdakov (802336)]

just before reading the article as far as I know not such warm climate is optimal :) see http://www.usaweekend.com/00_issues/000116/000116b iology.html [usaweekend.com]

Pay attention to air quality. Cool, dry air, especially on your face, helps keep you alert, while heat and humidity make you drowsy. Studies show that mental performance, such as rule-based logical thinking, can be reduced by 30% at temperatures not even warm enough to cause sweating. So keep the room at 70 degrees, the average optimum temperature for mental work in the United States. (Not everybody shares the same optimal temperature -- some are "cold-blooded"; others are "hot-blooded" -- so you may need to adjust up or down.)

see also http://schoolstudio.engr.wisc.edu/energysmartschoo ls.html [wisc.edu]

Optimal Thermal Conditions Thermal comfort has been shown to influence task performance, attention spans and levels of discomfort. In general, historical empirical studies going back 50 years have indicated that temperatures above 80 degrees F tend to produce harmful physiological effects that decrease work efficiency and output (McGuffy, 1982). Thermal conditions are below optimal levels affect dexterity, while higher than optimal temperatures decrease general alertness and increase physiological stress. One researcher (Harner, 1974) when reviewing optimal temperature levels for the performance found that reading and mathematical skills were adversely affected by temperatures above 74 degrees F. Reading speed and comprehension were most affected by temperature. A significant reduction in reading speed and comprehension occurred between 73.4 degrees F and 80.6 degrees F. This researcher also found that achievement is mathematical operations such as multiplication, addition and factoring have been shown to be significantly reduced by air temperatures above 77 degrees F.

Since it's under science...

[Pi_0's don't shower (741216)]

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...)

Re:I can't believe that

[LiENUS (207736)]

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.

Re:Warm???

[gclef (96311)]

Add another problem: warmer temps mean lighter/less female clothing. The effects of this on male productivity should be obvious.

Re:Warm???

[gosand (234100)]

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.

What is even worse is when someone (I won't say women) adjusts the thermostat in the computer lab because they are too cold. Computer labs are SUPPOSED to be cold. You crank the ambient temp up to 75 degrees F and you are asking for trouble with the servers. It is amazing that some people in the software industry don't realize this.

Re:Warm???

[blackmonday (607916)]

The funniest thing about that? Most office thermostats are placebos [careerjournal.com].

Re:Warm???

[strictfoo (805322)]

Women, on average, have a slower metabolism than men. This is due to them having a higher, on average, percentage of body fat (due to the natural features that women have). Thus, women produce less heat than men, on average, and like their environment to be slightly warmer.

There is nothing wrong with pointing out the phyiscal differences between sexes.

I have never worked at a company where there was an issue with men turning the heat up, which causes discomfort for others, just because they were a little too cold.

Re:Warm???

[Exocet (3998)]

I can state that, through direct observation that the women in the office I'm in like their heat. In fact, they almost all have space heaters under their desks. It's hell working on their computers; I always get way too hot.