Goldilocks at Work - Are You Engaged in Thermostat Wars?

I'm the Goldilocks of the office. That has nothing to do with the color of my hair nor does it suggest I run around in the forest unsupervised. It is simply that I don't like things too hot or too cold. How some "bears" can tolerate outdoor work, I don't know. I like my climate "just right" and I'm most at home in the artificially controlled temperature of the mall -- where it's always perfectly maintained. Unfortunately, even though I try to conquer the thermostat, it always wins. I have never worked in an office where all employees can agree on the setting for that thermostat. It is an insidious, tiny, wicked beast that controls the HVAC, your comfort and ultimately your happiness.

Apparently, thermostat wars are a common occurrence in many workplaces. So common that it is a popular topic of complaints, blogs and ultimately office policies. Reports of managers and building owners locking the controls while their freezing (or sweltering) employees work to pick the lock or change the settings when the "boss is out" is on the rise.

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OSHA, the governing body over these sorts of issues, remains basically silent, refusing to be the UN of the cold (or hot) war that is raging at the workplace. OSHA states, in its "Reiteration of Existing OSHA Policy on Indoor Air Quality," that, as a general rule, office temperature and humidity are matters of human comfort. They stick their neck out a little to recommend temperature control in the range of 68-76 degrees. The policy leads confused offices to a second source of guidance from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). ASHRAE's Standard 55, the Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy, defines "thermal comfort" as an office where employees who are "wearing normal amounts of clothing, are neither too cold nor too warm." Then the policies get into technical details about air quality and humidity, which, if I haven't bore you already, are really too technical for the nature of this discussion.

We know that for every issue, there's someone who will do a study and that task was tackled by Cornell's Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory. The results of this month-long study, conducted at Insurance Office of America's headquarters in Florida in 2004, proved that cooler temperatures increased business labor costs by 10%! Cornell reports that when the temperatures increased from 68-77 degrees, typing errors fell by 44% and typing output jumped 150%. "The results of our study also suggest raising the temperature to a more comfortable thermal zone saves employers about per worker, per hour," said lab director, Alan Hedge. Related studies showed that productivity drops slightly when temperature exceeds 77 degrees.

Regardless of the research, you can't just crank the temperature up or down and make everyone more productive or happy. "You can put on a sweater, but you can't take off your skin," grumbled one blogger. So what's a business to do to address employee complaints? ASHRAE recommends that it is important to validate employees' complaints about temperature and offers these suggestions:

1. Define and validate the complaint
2. Check the HVAC system equipment operation
3. Calculate the build space loads and verify that there is sufficient capacity
4. Review zoning conflicts
5. Test the zone for good and stable temperature control
6. Review draft problems
7. Measure the humidity level to verify it is below the ASHRAE Standard 55 (upper dew point limit of 62.6 degrees F).

So if you're Goldilocks and you can't work in the mall, you might need to keep a fan and heater at your feet and a sweater on the hook next to your umbrella and raincoat. As for me, I'm going to avoid the bears and keep fussing with the thermostat, looking for the temperature that's "just right."

A summary of the Cornell Temperature Study is available on the helpful links page on vannattapr.com.

Goldilocks at Work - Are You Engaged in Thermostat Wars?

Mary Louise VanNatta, CAE has received her Certified Association Executive designation from the American Society of Association Executives.

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