Nothing adds heat to an office like a fight over the temperature
By Amy Saunders, The Columbus Dispatch
June 18, 2008
On the hottest days of summer, Allison Thomas can be more miserable inside her Downtown office than she is outdoors in the heat.
She wears a jacket and sweater to keep her from shivering at Broadway Across America, where box-office customers often comment about how refreshing the 60-degree air conditioning feels.
"And we're like, 'You don't understand -- we have space heaters on!" said Thomas, 36, of the Eastmoor neighborhood. "It's crazy; it really is. It never really gets to the point where you're feeling comfortable."
Unable to control the thermostat in One Columbus Center at Broad and High streets, Thomas can't wear summer outfits to work. But restricted fashion is hardly the lone consequence of a heavily air-conditioned atmosphere.
Research has shown that cold conditions can reduce employee productivity; aggravate health problems such as arthritis; and, at a time of heightened national concern about both the environment and the economy, increase energy costs.
What's more, a survey by the International Facility Management Association underscores the No. 1 complaint heard by building supervisors: "The office is too cold."
So why not just raise the thermostat?
Well, for starters, there's the survey's No. 2 complaint: "The office is too hot."
Clearly, pleasing everyone isn't easy.
"No matter what you do, you're always going to have people be too hot and too cold," said Don Young, spokesman for the facility association.
"It's thermostat wars."
Although the U.S. Department of Labor recommends setting the office temperature between 68 and 76 degrees, many factors determine what feels comfortable to an individual.
Among them, Young noted, are a person's gender, age, weight, job, stress level and desk location.
Alan Hedge, an ergonomics professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., advises letting the warmth proponents win out.
His recent study found that workers performed better at higher temperatures than in cooler conditions. When the temperature was as low as 68 degrees, employees did less work and made more typing errors -- their fingers becoming numb and their minds wandering.
"You start focusing on the fact that you feel chilly rather than on the work you're doing," he said.
That's true for Marysville resident Mike Thiergartner, whose fingers are frequently cold because of Raynaud's syndrome, a blood-vessel disorder.
His ThermoRest, a wrist-heating keyboard pad he sells online, was "an invention out of necessity" for his job as a distribution-center manager, he said.
To otherwise stem the complaints of cold employees -- and to save energy -- building managers can fix ventilation problems, experiment with window treatments and invest in new cooling technology, experts say.
In some energy-efficient buildings, a motion sensor triggers a cooling system shut-off in a room that isn't being used. One company, Johnson Controls, makes a "personal environment" system that allows individuals to adjust the temperature around their desks.
Without building upgrades, experts say, offices can become outdated. Their cooling systems might have taken into account the heat produced by the larger computers and intense lighting that no longer exist in most offices.
"You end up with a system that does a fantastic job of creating a refrigerator -- it's what it was designed to do," said Hedge, the Cornell professor. "But it was based on the assumption that you'd have a lot of hot stuff in the refrigerator."
Another old assumption was that most office employees were suit-wearing men, he said. Yet these days, with more women working outside the home and workplace dress codes having been relaxed, many employees wear lighter clothing on the job.
In Japan, many have little choice but to do so.
In 2005, the government launched a Cool Biz initiative, encouraging offices to keep summertime temperatures at 82 degrees. By the following year, 93 percent of the 1,300 companies in Japan's Keidanren business association were participating in the energy-saving program, according to an annual report by the group.
Cool Biz is mandatory in government buildings.
Meanwhile, a blast of air conditioning at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services office near Port Columbus produced a recent thermostat reading of 63 degrees, according to one employee (and space-heater user).
One worker there walks around the office wrapped in a blanket; another once draped a coat over her head while sitting at her computer.
"It really is that bad," said the employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of getting fired. "It shouldn't be this cold. The governor is wanting us all to cut back on budgets and here we are!"
The state has no temperature standard for its offices, said Eileen Turner, spokeswoman for the Department of Development, which oversees the Ohio Energy Office.
But at the Rhodes Tower and Riffe Center, which house a combined 8,000 state employees, the thermostat is supposed to be set at 74 degrees during the summer.
"We do get variations in the temperature throughout the buildings," said Jack Quatman, general manager for Jones Lang LaSalle, which oversees the two state towers for the Ohio Building Authority. "The sheer size of them makes it almost impossible to keep it perfect at all times.
"I always joke that there's two temperature settings: too hot and too cold."