Heat up the office for efficiency
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INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER – VOLUME 48: NUMBER 10
A few changes can curb CO2 emissions and make your workforce happier
A growing body of research shows that turning up the thermostat a few degrees can boost office productivity without making occupants uncomfortable.The problemis that since the advent of air conditioning buildings have gotten out of tune with the environments they’re in and the people who work in the building.
A paper in Nature Climate Change in 2015 cited an empirical thermal comfort model developed in the 1960s. It was based on an average male’s metabolic rate and might overstate the standard female metabolic rate by 35 percent. A study that dates from the early 1900s claimed that people typed faster in cold temperatures.
But research in the current century has dispelled that notion. they found the biggest effect on productivity by far came from temperature.And the hotter the better. Productivity increases as temperature reaches the upper 70s, not dropping until it hits the mid-80s. Research shows that if you strip everything off and put people in bathing suits, everybody chooses a temperature of about 78 degrees.
