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%, 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
“The results of our study also suggest raising the temperature to a more comfortable thermal zone saves employers about $2 per worker, per hour,” said Hedge.
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
An abbreviated version of the study is available at https://ergo.human.cornell.edu .
