Autumn begins already this week and winter follows unevitably. Even though the sun and heat lovers do not cheer, it may have some advantages for managers because employees are more productive in inclement weather. That is at least according to the authors of the Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good Productivity study from Harvard Business School. The study concludes that we are the most productive when it rains because we are simply not distracted by possible outdoor activities.
The authors began analyzing data from a medium-sized bank in Tokyo, Japan, which has been collecting data on the productivity of its employees for two and a half years after introducing a new system of processing mortgages in mid-2007. At that time, the bank processed more than 56,000 applications for mortgages, which took more than 600,000 operations when entering data. The data on the productivity of the bank's employees were compared with meteorological data and showed that in rainy weather employees managed their tasks faster. The same was true in the weather with poor visibility and very high temperatures. On the contrary, the productivity was lower in bright and sunny days.
A verification of the experience identified followed in the laboratory at the Harvard University. 136 students participated a half of whom came to the laboratory in rainy and half in sunny days. Some students from both groups were deliberately reminded of outdoor activities they could do by the researchers. They looked at the pictures showing sailing or walking in the forests in sunny days and described what they liked most. Control groups of students from both the groups then described they typical daily activities instead of looking at the photos of sunny days.
All students completed several questionnaires and the faster they completed their tasks, the greater financial reward they got. Questionnaires were prepared in Italian to be more difficult for the English-speaking students and easier for the Italian-speaking leader of the study to find out possible linguistic errors.
It turned out that the participants with the best (fastest and most accurate) results were from the control group of students from rainy days, ie those who worked without the sun and were not stimulated by images of outdoor activities in sunny days. Photographs significantly reduced production rate. The resulting findings were therefore the same as in the case of the Tokyo bank.
For managers, this means that they should reduce disruptive posters of sunny beaches and various outdoor activities in the offices of their teams. If possible, they should schedule tasks that do not require continuous attention and enable more flexible thinking for the sunny days.
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