The dog days of summer generally aren’t known for temperatures that bring on bouts of shivering—unless you’re among the many who work in office buildings that are not so much air-conditioned as they are refrigerated. 
Office thermostat wars can be an issue year-round, but a recent study hitting the news gives freezing workers more ammunition for the fight. The journal Nature Climate Change published an online report on August 3 explaining why some people—women in particular—are uncomfortably cold at work during the hot summer.
A pair of Dutch researchers from Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands reveal that office building engineers typically follow temperature standards set in the 1960s that relied on what was deemed comfortable for a 40-year-old 154-pound man.
That leaves most women, who have lower metabolic rates than men, reserving desk-drawer space for sweaters to pull on over their summer clothing or even fleece blankets to wrap up in as soon as they arrive at work. The study says the model many building thermostat czars use “may overestimate female metabolic rate by up to 35 percent.”
Legal concerns?
The human resources department often finds itself on the front lines of the temperature war, forced to deal with complaints and mediate disagreements about appropriate thermostat settings. While the issue is usually just annoyed employees, it also can pose legal concerns.
Lisa Berg, an attorney with Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, P.A. in Miami, Florida, says it’s possible for office temperatures to trigger the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If an employee has an ADA-covered disability that is affected by temperature, an employer covered under the ADA is required to offer an accommodation unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the employer.
Also the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission updated its informal guidance in 2013 on how the ADA Amendments Act applies to employees who have cancer. “The EEOC notes that with respect to cancer, an individual ‘should easily be found to have a disability,’ as cancer substantially limits the major life activity of normal cell growth.” Berg says. “The EEOC discusses modification of office temperature as one type of reasonable accommodation.”
Other concerns
Performance and productivity are other concerns for HR, Berg says, noting that a 2004 study from Cornell University suggests that temperature affects both. A monthlong study conducted at an office in Orlando, Florida, equipped nine workstations with a sensor that checked air temperature every 15 minutes. A Cornell news release on the study quotes the author as saying raising the temperature to a more comfortable level might save employers about $2 per worker per hour.
“At 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the workers were keyboarding 100 percent of the time with a 10 percent error rate, but at 68 degrees, their keying rate went down to 54 percent of the time with a 25 percent error rate,” Alan Hedge, a professor in the university’s Department of Design and Environmental Analysis, said. “Temperature is certainly a key variable that can impact performance.”
No OSHA rules
Academic researchers aren’t the only ones addressing office temperature. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) also weighs in on the issue, but just barely. The agency doesn’t have regulations requiring specific temperatures, but it does recommend a temperature range of 68-76 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity control in the range of 20 to 60 percent.
“As a general rule, office temperature and humidity are matters of human comfort,” the guidance states. “OSHA has no regulations specifically addressing temperature and humidity in an office setting.”
The guidance goes on to say that “hazards for which OSHA does not have a specific standard are governed by Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (the Act; General Duty Clause) which requires that employers provide employment and a place of employment that are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.”
The agency points out, though, that office temperature relates to comfort rather than death or serious physical harm. “OSHA cannot cite the General Duty Clause for personal discomfort,” the guidance states.
Discrimination issue?
Since OSHA provides little help to shivering office workers, might they have other recourse? With science showing that the workers most likely to be cold at their desks are women, the specter of sex discrimination comes up.
But do building temperatures based on a 1960s formula catering to the comfort level of men actually rise to the level of unlawful discrimination against women, who now make up a much larger portion of the workforce than they did decades ago?
That issue is “too hot to touch,” Berg says, suggesting that “perhaps a compromise is the best solution,” one that will “save money and the planet!”