Workplace temperatures are apparently set for men

Last month we had a team building barbeque at New Jersey 101.5 complete with food, games and plenty of fun. We also had a major heat wave where outside it was in the mid 90’s.

After being out in the heat I come inside to find Kelly Waldron bundled up in a coat which made me sweat even more. I asked her why and she told me that the studios are freezing.  That’s been my experience in most of the radio stations I worked in. I was told it was because of the cubicle studios in the big space in the central area made them hard to regulate comfortable temperature for. Consequently you have space heaters being brought in to studios to offset the air conditioning and driving engineers nuts.

Now comes a study that says offices are setting temperatures based on the decades-old -formula using the metabolic rates of men.

Their study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, says that most office buildings set temperatures based on a decades-old formula that uses the metabolic rates of men. The study concludes that buildings should “reduce gender-discriminating bias in thermal comfort” because setting temperatures at slightly warmer levels can help combat global warming.

It’s true that man once represented most people in offices. But women now constitute half of the work force and usually have slower metabolic rates than men, mostly because they are smaller and have more body fat, which has lower metabolic rates than muscle. Indeed, the study says, the current model “may overestimate resting heat production of women by up to 35 percent.”

How are the temperatures where you work? Would you like to see them adjusted either colder or warmer?