Thermal comfort and productivity in a workplace: An alternative approach evaluating productivity management inside a test room using textual analysis

Abstract

One of the issues in building research is the design of environments providing high standards of comfort and increasing the productivity of occupants and workers. However, the subjectivity related to perception and comfort, and the difficulty in assessing productivity are two critical aspects widely reported in the literature. In this work, the new Methodology for the Analysis of Computerized Textual Data (M.A.D.I.T.) has been applied to the study of productivity. It investigates the use of Natural Language, considered as the medium through which humans attribute sense to the situations they are involved – in this case, a working reality. The new strategy tries to fill the gap on the difficult quantification of productivity management due to the bias linked to the personal assessment criteria, that can hardly be predicted and evaluated. Experimental tests have been carried out in a test room to observe how people react and interact with a typical office workplace, with fixed and controlled environmental parameters, thus focusing on how individual perceptions, evaluations and preferences can be used by potential workers to manage their productivity. The research, while providing further evidence that comfort level does not seem to provide a direct and exclusive factor of productivity, it also offers productivity management indicators, which can be used not only to evaluate work activity, but also to orient it towards a higher level of efficiency and effectiveness.