Time to Cool Off
The ongoing saga of the power outage in Queens affecting 100,000 people has been amazing to watch. With the excessive heat throughout the country, the power went down in some sections of northern Queens last week. Days have gone by, and the total number, initially estimated at 10,000 is now over 100,000. Some folks even got their power back, restocked their refrigerators, only to find the power went out again. Seems ConEd can't seem to figure out what went wrong, the City is sending in tens of thousands of bottles of water and meals and tempers are flaring.
So what does this have to do with the workplace, you ask? This survey from the other side of the "Pond" (where the temperatures have also been soaring) shows just how detrimental excessive heat can be on productivity. "More than three-quarters (78%) [of respondents] complained of working environments that stifled not only their creativity, but also their ability to get the job done." In addition, More than eight in 10 (81%) of workers find it difficult to concentrate at work if the office temperature is higher than the norm, with 62% of these admitting that under hot conditions a typical task may take up to 25% longer than usual to complete.