Office temperature .. when bosses go bad!

britboy4321

britboy4321

britboy4321

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Here's the gig.

At my office the temperature was set at 21 degrees. Happy for months, in fact never even thought about it.

Normally office has - what - 40 people here. Large project comes along. We get a consultancy in to help us for a few months.

Consultancy sends 40 Indian guys and girls .. who are just over here from India, first UK role. Fair enough - nice people. They even get new project manager from there .. seems decent.

They moan about how unfeasibly cold the office is.

Live and let live .. we turn it up to 24 degrees. Phew! What a scorcher! We'll make do though.

They moan about how unfeasibly cold the office is.

We say .. 'er, what? Put on a jumper'. They refuse. We get warned by HR we can't make people wear jumpers (!!). They want shirts with rolled up sleeves thats it. Two of them wear sandles!!

They keep sneaking the air temperature control to 30 DEGREES. Yes you read that correctly. 30 DEGREES. Just sneaking off to the control box and - up to 30. Without saying anything. Half an hour later .. the original staff are DYING!

We go to project manager - as mentioned new guy from India - saying 'Stop 'em from doing that!' We can't say anything direct you see because we are EQUAL to them in seniority - and we tried all the negotiation we did but they still just sneak it to 30 degrees or on 1 occasion 32 degrees.

New MANAGER guys says .. wait for it ... '30 degrees seems reasonable guys, it's often 45 degrees in DELHI and we work no problem ..'

!!

HR doesn't want to know. They are so scared of the race card being played.

So the office temperature is a little bit of hell. Not allowed to open a window as it 'lets the heat out'. big bosses boss isn't even in this office, and he gave a 1 sentence 'I expect your project to be able to sort out issues like this. If anyone says they can't, they shouldn't be in the team' without giving ANY edict to new manager guy - who supports '30 degrees' all day.


To the intenetz!! What would you say a office temperature should be? Can you think of any way forward? (My mate is saying 'I'm going to come in out-of-hours, turn it to 22 degrees then smash the controller with a hammer'!!)
 
That sounds horrific, and as a consultancy they should be adhering to your environment, not the other way round. Give the correct person a righteous slap.
 
Temperatures in the workplace are covered by the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, which place a legal obligation on employers to provide a “reasonable” temperature in the workplace. The Approved Code of Practice suggests a minimum temperature in workrooms should normally be at least 16 degrees Celsius – or 13 degrees Celsius if much of the work indoors involves severe physical effort. These temperatures are not absolute legal requirements; the employer’s essential duty is to determine what reasonable comfort will be in the particular circumstances.

A meaningful figure cannot be given at the upper end of the scale. This is because the factors, other than air temperature which determine thermal comfort, i.e. radiant temperature, humidity and air velocity become more significant and the interplay between them more complex as temperatures rise. In addition to the Workplace Regulaitons, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to make a suitable assessment of the risks to the health and safety of their workers, and take action where necessary and where reasonably practicable.

The temperature of the workplace is one of the potential hazards that employers should address to meet their legal obligations. HSE recommends that employers should consult with employees or their representatives, to establish sensible means to cope with high temperatures. In the event of an unresolved dispute, employees may contact their local environmental health office or HSE office for advice on how best to take the matter forward.
Click to expand...

http://www.hse.gov.uk/temperature/law.htm

It seems there isn't an upper limit. I know here we're supposed to try and satisfy 70% of the staff in an office but I think that's probably just a health & safety aim rather than being anything do with law.

It does sound laughable though. I'd be going to see HR or turning up in shorts, t-shirt and flip flops.
 
Wear some daisy dukes and a tank top then sit near a window.

Really though, that sounds like a horrible temperature to work in. Its fine saying thats how they used to work, but its not how you work in that office. Very unreasonable that they wont just put a jumper on, so much easier than making you strip off down to your bananaman yfronts. or just turn it unreasonably low every time they do it.
 
They sneak it up - you sneak it down. Eventually it will be bought to the attention of the powers that be as everyone will be moaning and not actually getting work done.

Ask to move to a different office perhaps as it's unbearable?

I personally wouldn't have shifted from 21. Tough luck.


M.
 
We had issues with the air con our last office, not from people turning it up but from it being an old building the system was rubbish. We were in a secure part of the building, hence no opening windows, and I remember coming in on a Monday morning after the office had been left empty all weekend with all the machines turned off and finding the room at 28C. As above there isn't an absolute temperature which they cannot legally go over.

We just kept on complaining to HR about what could be classed as reasonable and just kept on escalating until we even got the UK HR Director onsite and had him agree that if the temperature went over 26C we could automatically walk out and work from home. That did spur the onsite facilities people to do some investigation which found that a heater in one of the vents, which they hadn't known existed previously, was stuck on.

We're in a new building now and there is a constant battle between those who want the office ~20C and those who want it ~26C .... the cooler faction normally wins (after being told off for using sarcasm for suggesting that the problem is due to the lower floors being on fire) as suggesting that people put jumpers on is a lot more palatable solution to the facilities department than running the risk of us threatening to take clothes off :)
 
Why don't you request a risk assessment from your H&S officer then request a fan be bought to enable you to work?

At the very least request a risk assessment, then any issues with the work environment will have been formally recorded by the company.
 
Seems a bit silly of them to expect an office in the UK to be as hot as India. See if you can argue that the heat affects productivity, I know that I can't concentrate anywhere near as well in hot weather and trivial things wind me up.
 
we always have the oldest sickly, people sat by the air con and windows so we almost never had the air con on and untill the hottest days most of the windows and doors are shut...
 
Back at school, my maths C teacher always took us into a smaller room and put the temperature lower if we had anything important going on (exam/assignments) as he has read studies on lower temperatures being better for brain activity or something like that.

(It was only a small class of 7 I believe, so it wasn't to much trouble to relocate the class either)
 
When I was doing an internship in a Essex office, it really p'd me off when all the little sissies would constantly complain about the cold when I opened the window, yes there is a little snow outside but so what, man up :mad:
 
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