Lockheed Martin reports that after daylighting its facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company achieved 15% higher worker productivity. Additionally, the company won a $1.5 billion defense contract based on increased productivity, profits which paid for the entire building. As an added bonus, the company saved $300,000 to $400,000 a year on energy bills.
(Greening and the Bottom Line: Increasing Productivity Through Energy-Efficient Design, by Joseph Romm and William Browning, 1994)
(The non-profit Center for Energy & Climate Solutions’ Cool Companies website, www.cool-companies.org, 2002)
Workers in one Boeing facility stated natural light improved their ability to detect imperfections in jet panels during assembly by 20%. The savings associated with this ability to catch errors actually exceeded the building’s annual energy savings, which was 90%.
(London Financial Times, April 10, 1996)
(U.S. Department of Energy and Rocky Mountain Institute Report, “Greening the Building and the Bottom Line: Increasing Productivity Through Energy-Efficient Design,” 1994)
VeriFone, a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard in Costa Mesa, Calif., upgraded its 76,000-square-foot building to include a series of roof skylights and other energy-efficient features. On sunny days, workers used only natural daylight and small task lights. Workers no longer complained about end-of-the-day headaches or end-of-the-week sluggishness. As a result, absenteeism dropped 40% to 45%, employee productivity increased 5% and energy bills were slashed 50%, for a payback time of under one year.
(City of Seattle website, www.ci.seattle.wa.us, 2002)
(The non-profit Center for Energy & Climate Solutions’ Cool Companies website, www.cool-companies.org, 2002)
According to EREC, daylighting may reduce the loss of worker productivity during power failures. Studies show that if a worker in a daylit office can continue productive work for even one hour during a power loss, the dollar savings are equal to the cost of lighting that person’s work area for an entire year.
(Reference Briefs found on the EREC’s website, http://www.eren.doe.gov, Updated August 2002)
Mail sorters at the main U.S. Post Office in Reno, Nev., became the most productive and error-free in the western U.S. after a retrofit to include natural light. In five months, productivity on the machines under the new lighting shot up almost 10%, leveling off to about 6% after one year. Working in a more naturally lit environment resulted in employees who did their jobs better and faster. While combined energy savings and maintenance savings came to about $50,000 per year, the improvements in employee productivity ($400,000 to $500,000) dwarfed the energy savings, resulting in a payback of less than 12 months.
(Journal of Property Management, January 2000)
(The non-profit Center for Energy & Climate Solutions’ Cool Companies website, www.cool-companies.org, 2002)
The lack of light has been documented to cause Seasonal Affective Disorder (winter depression or the winter blues), maladjustment of our body clock (circadian rhythms) and consistent periods of reduced productivity and enthusiasm. The National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research estimates that, in the United States alone, businesses lose more than $150 billion a year in productivity as a result of employee fatigue. One solution is providing a well-lit workspace, with as much natural light as possible.
(Management Review, October 1999)
A 2001 study by the Lighting Research Center in Troy, N.Y. of the impact of daylight on worker productivity during winter months found that workers in windowed offices spent significantly more time working on their computers than workers in interior, windowless offices.
(California Energy Commission website, www.energy.ca.gov, 2002)
Carnegie Melon University’s Intelligent Workplace design studio found that improved lighting with an extra up-front cost of $370,000 saved almost $700,00 in energy and operating costs for a typical workplace. However, the resulting gains in productivity were worth as much as $14 million. Here’s why: In a typical building, energy costs average $1.50 to $2.50 per square foot, while salaries exceed $200 per square foot. Cutting energy use in half typically saves $1 per square foot per year, while boosting productivity just 5% saves more than $10 per square foot.
(The non-profit Center for Energy & Climate Solutions’ Cool Companies website, www.cool-companies.org, 2002)
Research suggests that unvarying electric light can lead to a low-level kind of sensory deprivation that can lead to impairment of organized thinking, depression, confusion and general irritability. By contrast, variability of light has been shown to have a positive impact on worker performance. A study of shift workers under a daylight-simulating skylight showed improved performance of cognitively challenging tasks by creating a higher sense of mental arousal.
(Report by the Parsons School of Design, New School of Social Research in New York analyzing 60 studies and articles
on the topic of daylighting and productivity, 1999)
