More on temperature in the workplace
The July 2005 issue of Entrepreneur cites a study of office temperature, and its effects on workplace productivity. Consider this excerpt:At 68 [F], workers typed 54 percent of the time, with a 25 percent error rate; at 77 degrees, the staff typed 100 percent of the time, with a 10 percent error rate.I just mentioned a place where I worked, where the temperature was maintained at 60 F. You'd feel like Bob Cratchit (pictured, played by Richard E. Grant), even in the summertime, wishing you could add just a single lump of coal to the fire. And your fingers require to be limber if you are to type without errors. So the bottom line is -- if such studies are to be trusted -- you need to regulate workplace temperature, especially for "knowledge workers," to get mileage out of them.
There was a time when I was working at NASA Glenn Research Center, when I attended a meeting of 50 people, in a room designed to comfortably hold 30, with the doors closed, and with the meeting chair smoking a pipe. I was not the only attendee nearly rendered unconscious. But this was in the days before smoking was outlawed in public buildings. Since we had to attend the meeting, and since we could not ask this manager not to smoke, we ultimately were caught up in a backlash of "no smoking" signs in individual offices -- all up and down the hall. That was a precursor to the anti-smoking-near-totalitarianism we see today. I could easily guess that one day the Department of Labor will step in and say that all public buildings must be kept between 66 F and 75 F -- or else. For entrepreneurs' sake, I hope with all my heart it never comes to that.
Labels: office space
posted by Ron @ 11:49 AM
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