Offices, Windows and Daylight: Call Center Worker Performance

Lisa Heschong and Mudit Saxena, Heschong Mahone Group Inc.
Roger Wright and Stacia Okura, RLW Analytics, Inc.
Don Aumann, California Energy Commission

Keywords

Abstract

This study looked at 100 workers in an incoming call center located at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District whose performance was continuously tracked by a computer system and measured in terms of time to handle each call. Extensive data was collected about the physical environment at each office worker's cubicle. Multivariate regression analysis was used to determine if any of the variations in environmental conditions were significantly associated with differences in worker performance (both daily and hourly) and to control for other potential influences.

Workers in the Call Center were found to process calls 6% to 12% faster when they had the best possible view versus those with no view. Other physical conditions were also found to have significant associations with worker performance. When variation in hourly performance was considered, higher rates of outside air delivery were associated with faster handling of calls.

Information about the workstation environmental conditions was able to explain 2% to 4% of the total variation observed in performance. Overall, the physical variables represented about 1/8th to 1/5th of our entire ability to predict variation in individual worker performance. This study has shown that indoor environmental conditions can have a measurable relationship to changes in office worker performance and has established a range of likely effect sizes that other researchers can use to refine the needs of future studies. The merits of call centers as study test sites for this purpose will also be discussed.