Companies and employers may now have a better way of increasing productivity at the workplace. A new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health declares air quality in the office may be able to increase workers' cognitive performance.
A group of researchers lead by Director Joseph Allen found that people working in "green" buildings with exceptional ventilation and minimal air pollution and carbon dioxide (CO2) function better in cognitive circumstances than workers in "non-green" offices with usual pollutant and CO2 levels.
As observed by Director Allen of Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment, the results suggest that modest enhancements to indoor environmental quality may have a huge effect on the decision-making of workers.
Utilizing a double-blind study approach, the researchers observed 24 participants-including managers, engineers, creative marketing professionals, designers, programmers and architects-while they worked in a controlled work environment. To achieve unbiased results, the participants and analysts were blinded to test conditions.
For six days in November 2014, while the participants were performing their usual work, the researchers put them in various simulated building conditions and conducted cognitive tests at the end of each day. The tests showed that the scores of those working in green environments were 61% higher than that of those who worked under conventional conditions. Gauging 9 conginitive function domains, researchers examined that the most significant improvements occurred in the areas of:
- crisis response (97% higher scores in green conditions and 131% higher in green conditions with enhanced ventilation)
- strategy (183% and 288% higher)
- information usage (172% and 299% higher)
Aside from that, the researchers noticed that the average scores for seven of nine cognitive functions tested decreased as carbon dioxide levels in the workspace increased. The findings grant a wholly new public health impetus for keeping CO2 levels worldwide as low as possible. Indeed, thsi is another reason why we should work against global warming.
