The Impact of Sunlight on Business Productivity
Clinical Evidence That Sunlight Supports The Productivity Theory
As the country embraces “green” building design - be it in the workplace or at home - daylight has become a premium. Not only does it save energy - more sunlight means less bulb light - but research shows that workers with access to natural light are more productive. Recent studies supporting the productivity claim are helping architects convince developers that such green features are good for business - everybody’s business. Not only can landlords charge more for the space, but companies can achieve better results from their employees.
Based on a 1999 analysis Lisa Heschong, founder of Heschong Mahone Group, performed with shoppers and schoolchildren, she already knew that natural light caused shoppers to buy more and students to perform better in school. But in the study requested by the California Energy Commission, she wanted to analyze worker productivity and whether it mattered if people had a view. “We found really, really big effects,” said Heschong, who studied two call centers operating 12 hours a day with 100 employees. In each study, employees with views outside their windows answered and processed calls 7% faster than employees doing the same work without a view. It’s almost too big to be believable,” she said. “In both of those cases, the importance of a view jumped out of the data.”
As a result, some companies even going so far as to move executives away from windows to give more workers access to daylight. Companies have also discovered that offices designed to make workers more comfortable pay for themselves. Standard industry norms say that during a building’s 30-year life cycle, a company will spend 90% of the costs on salaries for its workers; 3% on energy for lighting, heating and cooling; 4% on operating the building; and 3% on constructing the building. All companies are realizing that their most important asset is their people.
