Are Office Temperatures Impacting Your Work Productivity?
Anyone else feel like it is a CONSTANT battle in the office with the thermostat? Just when you feel like you've got the perfect temperature for your work environment, someone has to go and touch it and then it's either as cold as a meat locker or you feel like you're sitting on the sun.
A recent study published in the PLOS One journal titled "Battle for the thermostat: Gender and the effect of temperature on cognitive performance" gives an inside look on some of the effect of office temps on productivity for both men and women. According to this research, a colder office environment is better for men to work on math and verbal tasks, while women are better in a warmer environment.
Scarymommy.com highlighted the research in a recent article, noting:
They found that women performed better on both math and verbal tasks as temps got warmer, but men did the opposite. While the impact wasn’t large from a percentage perspective in terms of how many questions they got right, the study’s lead author, Agne Kajackaite, says it matters since temperature preferences in the workplace usually “vary by more than a single degree,” which compounds the results.
Me personally, I don't deal well with too warm, i'd rather be colder and have to layer up, so this research doesn't necessary hit home for me, but still interesting to read about. Where do you fall on the temperature range when it comes to being productive in the workplace?