The effect of indoor thermal environment on productivity by a year-long survey of a call centre

Workplace productivity and individual thermal satisfaction

“…In the surveyed office, self-estimated performance has a stronger correlation with perceived thermal satisfaction than with actual air temperature. This finding is inconsistent with the relationship obtained in the field study at a call center [9]. A possible reason could be that the situation of the office promoting COOL BIZ was slightly different from the call center; most workers in the COOL BIZ office had to use cooling items such as personal fan to alleviate their heat stress, by which they actively controlled their thermal environment.…”

“…Lan et al [8] investigated the effects of thermal discomfort on health and human performance by testing two conditions at 22 C and 30 C with twelve subjects. Task performance decreased when the subjects felt warm at 30 C than when they felt thermally neutral at 22 C. Tanabe et al [9] performed a field survey at a call center in Japan to investigate the effect of indoor air temperature on call response rate. The results showed that raising indoor air temperature by 1.0 K from 25.0 to 26.0 C was associated with a 1.9% reduction in call response performance.…”

A review of human thermal comfort in the built environment

“…In a Japanese call center an increase in air temperature from 25 to 26ºC resulted in a decrease in performance of 1.9% [379].…”

Warmer Environments Increase Implicit Mental Workload Even If Learning Efficiency Is Enhanced

“…For example, reaction time (RT; e.g., Gaoua et al, 2012), memory (e.g., Racinais et al, 2008), and working memory (e.g., Gaoua et al, 2011) were impaired by hot and cold room temperatures. Moreover, performance of office work (e.g., Niemelä et al, 2002;Tanabe et al, 2009) and study in school (e.g., Haverinen-Shaughnessy and Shaughnessy, 2015;Wargocki et al, 2019), which are thought to use such cognitive functions, were also impaired. These environmental psychology studies suggest that room temperature influences not only limited cognitive function but also a wide range of cognitive functions related to daily life.…”

“…Putting these studies together, it is possible that a room's temperature influences performance, which changes with time. Previous studies (Tanabe et al, 2009(Tanabe et al, , 2015 reported that the fixed room temperature setting in Japan (i.e., 28 • C in summer and 20 • C in winter) might cause adverse effects on work and study. These studies showed that the amount of work performed in the office decreases every time the room temperature increases by 1 • C, even if the room temperature is under 28 • C (Tanabe et al, 2009) and the use of cooling is necessary to improve thermal comfort and the amount of work performed in the office when the room temperature is 28 • C (Tanabe et al, 2015).…”