Policies on Proper Lighting in the Work Area

Office administrators and business authorities at different levels often face decisions about proper lighting within the office work place. Many opinions pop up. However, there are many cases where you make a mistake based on information or make decisions based on someone’s opinion. In light of this author’s experience, there are reasons why there’s a certain policy that all lights in the work area should be turned on (using OSHA as the primary reference) “Everyone becomes happy and productive with brightly lit work area.”

This policy about lighting was certainly for the benefit of the company, but there were a lot of discontent and very strong emotional resistance. One person was so angry that he did not work the next day. Others were satisfied with this decision and jokingly called those who prefer a darker work area “cave residents”. It is very likely that many companies have undergone lighting problems with employees who have made a decision to justify OSHA regulations and to improve productivity below them.

Poor Office Lighting

What comes after after this is an evaluation of these principles created following cautious reading coming from several academic, government and industrial resources which includes in depth lighting test completed through the collaboration of the following:

  • Light Right Consortium
  • Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center
  • National Research Council of Canada Institute for Research in Construction (NRC-IRC)

Also other academic questions associated with lighting, its impacts on efficiency, mindset and feelings. Additionally, the particular documentation coming from OSHA was cautiously discussed.

Bottom line: The results of this investigation have found these three results:

  1. OSHA has a minimum set standard for office work places and further describes specificiations down to specific work stations.
  2. There is absolutely no standard lighting level in order to boost productiveness, although lighting levels match individual efficiency, they do under a very variable and also personal foundation.
  3. Non-daylight lighting may have unfavorable effects on a company throughout three major locations which includes emotional/psychological concerns associated with human neuro-biology as well as physiology; monetary ramifications because of heat generation and also energy usage and ecological aspects; and productivity/profit.
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