One morning in 2019, 543 German college students craned over their exam papers in a Berlin exam hall. The test was varied. One section challenged their logic, another their math, a third their verbal reasoning.<\/p>\n
Throughout the exam, a researcher standing at the front of the room periodically adjusted the dial to make the room hotter or colder. What he discovered was astonishing.<\/p>\n
“As the temp went up, women did better on math and verbal tasks, and men did worse,” TY Chang, one of the experiment\u2019s authors, told NPR<\/a>. “And the increase for women in math and verbal tasks was much larger and more pronounced than the decrease in performance of men.”<\/p>\n In other words, the warmer the room, the better the women did on the tests overall. A two-degree temperature increase drove a two-percent improvement in math performance and a one-percent improvement in verbal performance among female participants.<\/p>\n But the point of Chang\u2019s study wasn\u2019t to find a \u201cperfect\u201d temperature for everyone. It was to show that \u201cone size doesn\u2019t fit all.\u201d One person may excel in a toasty 91 degrees. Another may work best at a chilly 61.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we should be more aware that environmental factors, like temperature, have a much bigger impact on your day-to-day lives than we generally give them credit for,” Chang said. “Our research says that even if as a business you only care about profit and productivity, you should take the comfort of your workers into account, as it will affect the bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n But the communal nature of office work means everyone endures the same temperature. That\u2019s a real problem for women because most offices set their temperature using the metabolic rates of men<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n On her podcast, former First Lady Michelle Obama revealed how women in President Barack Obama\u2019s cabinet struggled with maintaining a comfortable climate.<\/p>\n \u201cBarack was surrounded by women in his cabinet, many going through menopause and he could see it, he could see it in somebody because sweat would start pouring, and he\u2019s like, \u2018well what\u2019s going on,\u2019 you know? And it\u2019s like \u2018no, this is just how we live,\u201d the former First Lady said.<\/p>\n But temperature is just the tip of the physical environment iceberg.<\/p>\n Consider new mothers. For years, workplaces have exiled breastfeeding or pumping women from the office.<\/p>\n \u201c[I]imagine trying to find a spot to hook up a breast pump in a closet, or cramming expelled milk into a communal fridge,\u201d wrote science journalist Jessica Leigh Hester in Bloomberg<\/a>. It\u2019s unwelcoming and uncomfortable.<\/p>\n Office design treats women as an afterthought, rather than an essential component. It\u2019s been that way for years. But in the early days of the pandemic, everything changed.<\/p>\n Millions of Americans moved into work from home roles. Granted the autonomy to design their own workspace, women could tweak their physical workspace as they pleased. When they did so, they discovered just how tightly interwoven our environments and productivity are.<\/p>\n As the pandemic wore on and remote work became the norm, workers could pause and reflect on the changes. As they did so, the many benefits of working at home became apparent, especially for women.<\/p>\n Consider Melissa Regan, a sales enablement manager at RingCentral. In March 2020, Regan packed up her desk at RingCentral\u2019s Denver office and headed home, not knowing when \u2014 or even if <\/i>\u2014 she\u2019d return to the office. Initially, working from home was a shock to the system. But slowly, she learned to thrive in the quiet of her own home.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the office, everyone else around you impacts your mental space,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I\u2019m working from home, I sit at a desk in a closed-off room. When I’m in there I’m focused on work, and that’s it. I have big plantation shutters that, when open, look right out at trees. The green of those trees and the chirping of the birds gives me a sense of calm and focus.\u201d<\/p>\n That connection to the outside is something most employees crave. A Future Workplace<\/a> survey found that workers rank access to natural light and views of the outdoors as the<\/i> top workplace attribute. It even beat out workplace environment stalwarts like on-site cafeterias, fitness centers, and premium perks, including on-site childcare.<\/p>\n Remote working also offers respite from the disruptive open-plan offices. With fewer drive-by interruptions and less invasive noise, it\u2019s easier for women to draw boundaries and have productive work time.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have kids at home, it’s critical to have a dedicated space with a door that closes,\u201d says Melanie King<\/a>, senior director of public relations at Lendio<\/a>. \u201cThis also provides a literal barrier between work and home.\u201d<\/p>\n But even with a dedicated workspace, the reality of working from home means your home and professional lives blur. Your workspace is physically close to your personal space. For some, the two spaces may even overlap. While sharing rooms for working, cooking, and self-care is stressful for some, others find it liberating.<\/p>\n For example, after switching to working from home, Lendio CMO Karen Peterson<\/a> leaned into the increasingly blurred line between her personal and professional lives.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, the best thing about working from home is the ability to be fully immersed in work and then walk out of my home office area and have lunch in my own kitchen with my family,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can infuse those things that have been so positive at home into your office situation. And you can take things from your office situation and infuse them into your home.\u201d<\/p>\n The benefits of working from home are broad and varied \u2014 but the most significant is flexibility<\/i>.<\/p>\n Granting women autonomy over their physical environment means they can experiment and discover what works for them. For some, that\u2019s setting up their workstation in the closet. For others, it\u2019s splitting time between the kitchen table and a private space, or sharing calendars with roommates so that everyone has quiet time when they need it.<\/p>\n Many studies have concluded that work from home is more productive. One well-known study<\/a> by Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom examined remote workers at a Chinese travel agency. Bloom found that workers were 13% more efficient than their office-based peers. When you talk to people who work from home, it\u2019s clear where the productivity uptick comes from.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve been able to focus better because people aren’t interrupting my day by stopping at my desk,\u201d says Melissa Regan. \u201cI’m able to take my own pauses and look out of my window at my own backyard and a space that I worked so hard to afford \u2014 that means a lot to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Well-being matters to people, and for women, it improves when working from home.<\/p>\n According to Gallup\u2019s State of the American Workplace<\/a> survey, more than half of employees report better overall well-being as \u201cvery important\u201d to them. In the same poll, employees valued work-life balance and overall well-being as the second-most essential factors when choosing to work for an organization.<\/p>\n By being in control of their environments when working from home, women can create spaces and experiences that serve them best \u2014 something that a shared office environment doesn\u2019t allow them to do.<\/p>\n When employees achieve fulfillment in all aspects of their well-being, this leads to increased employee engagement and stronger individual performance.<\/p>\n Work from home offers countless benefits \u2014 if <\/i>you get it right. To see how work from home veterans created productive workspaces, we asked for their advice and suggestions. Here\u2019s what they told us.<\/p>\n Instead of designing an area from scratch, many suggested co-opting materials you already have to make your home office comfortable.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of things that you can do quickly to set up your space well that don’t take a lot of time or money,\u201d says Karen Peterson. \u201cFor example, I might not have a nice metal platform for my laptop, but I found the right stack of books to prop it up \u2014 and it\u2019s something pretty that I can look at on my desk because they\u2019re all books I love.\u201d<\/p>\n Others recommended replicating your on-site desk at home. Keeping the basic layout and structure the same encourages your brain to slip into \u201cwork\u201d mode and stay focused.<\/p>\n For example, Faiza Hughell<\/a>, RingCentral\u2019s senior vice president of small business, had a rarely used home office before the pandemic. It was functional but a world apart from her carefully constructed workstation in RingCentral\u2019s Belmont headquarters. When she began working from home full-time, her first task was to upgrade her home office setup.<\/p>\n \u201cI decided to mimic the desk set up I have at the office in my home because I’m pretty particular,\u201d recalls Hughell. \u201cI need to have a notepad right by my right hand, a certain number of pens in different colors, and so forth.<\/p>\n Your physical workspace is crucial \u2014 but so is getting away from it. With your office permanently nearby, it\u2019s tempting to skip breaks or stretch your working hours. But Faiza implores people to stay healthy and walk away at regular intervals.<\/p>\n \u201cMy team has carved out time to work outside every day,\u201d she explains. \u201cI have a mandatory break that I take every single day and I go outside and I breathe, and meditate, or do what I need to do to reground myself for the rest of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in 2017, 5.2% of the U.S. labor force worked from home. Now, that figure is 42% <\/a>\u2014 an 8X increase. With tens of millions of people thrust into unfamiliar work arrangements, there\u2019s a lot of learning to do.<\/p>\n No one expects you to get everything right the first time \u2014 and that includes building your physical workplace.<\/p>\n Experiment with your surroundings to see what works best for you. Natural light, temperature, music, noise, breaks \u2014 these are all things now in your control. So seize the opportunity to take control of your environment and build your<\/i> perfect workplace.<\/p>\n Read more on how women are thriving in their at-home work environments:<\/p>\n Chapter 6: Why we need to support working women who aren’t<\/em> working moms<\/a><\/p>\nFor women, a better<\/i> normal<\/h2>\n
Remote work isn\u2019t just more pleasant\u2014it\u2019s more productive<\/h2>\n
Lessons from the front line<\/h2>\n
Experiment with your environment<\/h2>\n
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