Productivity Advantages of Improved Temperature at Workplace
Saturday, October 15th, 2011A comfortable working environment is all what is necessary to make employees more productive. Actually, some studies found that there’s a continuous and active relation from a person’s productivity and his surroundings. The levels of discomfort and annoyance at work environment like extreme heat/cold surroundings, noise, poor lighting, may directly affect the performance and productivity from the employee. In the following paragraphs, we will have the way the workplace temperature affects employee productivity. We’ll also discuss about the advantages of improved temperature.
In several offices thermal the weather is not well controlled
In many commercial buildings, thermal the weather is not controlled properly because of insufficient cooling or heating capacity, high external and internal loads, improper control system and many other factors. Since the thermal conditions within the buildings vary based on the outside conditions, there is a need to maintain them based on the comfort, such method in which the modification does not affect the worker productivity.
Too warm – occupants feel tired: Too warm temperatures at the workplace helps make the employees feel exhausted. Many of the workers in US feel that it is not easy to concentrate when the workplace is too hot. Employees will feel tired despite doing very less work – this is a great obstacle to productivity.
Freezing – occupants easily get distracted: Low temperatures also create problems in the workplace. Such conditions people often break more often for tea and for heading out. Market research conducted by Cornell University, discovered that workers in cold places make more errors, which potentially boost the worker’s hourly labor cost by 10%. Additionally, infectious diseases like cold and flu spread in one person to another in cold weather.
Benefits of improved temperature at workplace
The temperature should neither be hot nor cold at workplace. It ought to be balanced well. A business may benefit in many ways by implementing proper temperatures. A number of them are:
Increased comfort: Every employee spends nearly 8 to 9 hours each day at workplace. A well maintained, moderate temperature always makes the person feel at ease at the office. With increased comfortableness, the worker tends to work more productively.
Less distraction: Improved temperature which suits the requirements of the workers always leaves them less distracted helping them concentrate more on the work.
Healthy environment: Warmer temperature (not hot) creates healthy environment by manipulating the outspread of contagious diseases, that is common in cold conditions. Consequently, people will fall sick less often and hence absenteeism reduces.
Fewer errors: A Cornell University study discovered that typing errors fell by 44% and typing output increased by 150% when the temperature rose from 68 degrees F to 77 degrees F.
Recommended office temperature
In order to get all the previously discussed benefits, one needs to stick to the recommended temperature and humidity levels for the offices. Following would be the effective recommendations.
Based on American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), ‘thermal comfort’ (an employee wearing normal amount clothing) should feel neither freezing nor too warm. In order to maintain such conditions, they recommend maintaining 68 to 74 degrees F in winter and 73 to 79 degrees F in summer.
The Occupational Safe practices Administration (OSHA) of United States Department at work recommended the temperature range as 68 to 76 degrees F and the humidity control range as 20%-60% for office environments.
Since the winter is fast approaching, ensure your workplace temperature is maintained properly to be able to maintain or improve the workplace productivity. The most efficient and cost efficient way to heat the office space is by using electric heaters. They are very helpful for smaller businesses which cannot afford heating system. Even when there’s central heating option, some spaces within the workplaces will be deprived of the heat. Portable infrared heaters are very useful when you are these situations.
Moreover, we can save energy using infrared heaters since they waste no energy in warming the air, unlike the traditional heating systems. They are far more energy-efficient than heating systems.