Germans Increase Office Efficiency With "Cloud Ceiling"

Griller_GT writes "According to the top researchers of the Fraunhofer-Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organization (IAO) in Stuttgart, the human mind is set up to work at its best under the open sky, with changing illumination caused by clouds passing overhead. The unvarying glare of office lighting is sub-optimal, therefore, and in order to wring the last ounce of efficiency from German workers whose productivity has already been pushed to unprecedented heights they have decided to rectify this with a LED cloud ceiling."

I approve!

[snowgirl]

A lot of what injures productivity is boredom. Having a non-constant light source could definitely keep things more interesting, even when you don't particularly notice it.

Keep workers happy == keep workers productive.

Consistent?

[zandeez]

Is this proven to be consistent and will it continue to have this effect on the workers? I'd like to reference the Hawthorne Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect [wikipedia.org] which basically states that any change to the working environment will increase productivity temporarily. So how long until it gets old and productivity slumps again?

just give me a damn office

[spiffmastercow]

For all that complexity, their office lacks an often-overlooked but very important productivity optimization: 4 walls, a ceiling, and a door for each employee (or at least those that need to concentrate from time to time).

Re:I approve!

[Thud457]

Keep workers happy == keep workers productive.

you do know that could evaluate to false as well right?

If they were American companies, they'd improve worker productivity every year for 30 years, pocket the money, reduce salaries in $$$ (while the government devalues the $$$$ themselves), and accuse the workers of being ingrates engaging in class warfare.


Oh, and I would think techies would be upset and disturbed by the unfamiliar environment provided by this big blue room simulator. Does it go black at night?

alternative

[Khashishi]

Or, you know, they could just install windows. (lowercase w)

Re:unprecedented heights of productivity

[sootman]

> You can only build a house in six weeks because an army of people
> is busily creating all of these finished materials for you, and if you
> add up all of the labor, it probably does come to somewhere in the
> neighborhood of twenty man-years of work to create a house.

You're not really doing the math right. Yeah, it takes a lot of effort in one sense, but every step creates materials for thousands of houses. It's not like someone opened a gypsum mine to make enough drywall for one house. Aluminum gets mined, refined, formed into gutters, and painted... and then I buy it for a couple bucks per foot because they make (literally) tons of it.

If a house costs $100,000, and everyone who has a hand in it makes $10/hr, and there are no other costs (materials, transportation, etc.), even that would be just 10,000 person-hours, or 5 people working a standard work year. (2,000 hours -- fifty weeks x 40 hours/week.)