While most people have struggled this week to dress for the chilly weather outside, for some the struggle to keep comfortable during the business day does not end even when the temperature outside climbs.

Office temperature ranks as the single most common complaint amongst office workers according to a 2003 survey by Houston-based International Facility Management Association (IFMA). ?It?s too cold? was number one in a list of top ten office complaints, followed by being too hot, poor janitorial service, not enough conference rooms and not enough storage and filing space in a workstation. Similar IFMA surveys conducted in 1991 and 1997 also found temperature as the number one beef although one time being too hot edged out being too cold.

At Shy Architecture, temperature has been a source of constant battle for Pedro Fornazaric and his boss Simon Hodgson.

?I react better to cooler temperatures whereas Simon is better in a warmer temperature,? Mr. Fornazaric said. ?If I leave the office, Simon has it set to 78 degrees which is way too hot. I like it at about 69 degrees so we?re constantly having air conditioning battles.?

Cool is an understatement at the offices of one of the Island?s larger insurers according to a 35-year-old underwriter who preferred to keep her name under wraps. She kept herself under wraps ? three layers thick ? this week to deal with the ?freezing? temperatures in her unheated office.

?You dress in layers like you?re going skiing,? she said. ?I was freezing so I was bundled all up and survived. One day I had on three layers and the next day I wore a sweater and blanket poncho. I just think maybe they just want us to stay awake.?

According a recent The New York Times report, last winter a university scientist embarked on a study to determine whether employee performance was impacted by the thermostat.

Alan Hedge, who is director of Cornell University?s Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory, said his study showed that employees are in fact more productive when the office temperature is higher.

Dr. Hedge equipped work stations in the Florida offices of the Insurance Company of America with sensors to regularly measure temperature while monitoring the keystrokes employees made on their computers. By linking this data, he was able to see how typing speed and error rates fluctuated with temperature. At a relatively warm 77 degrees, Hedge found that workers were keyboarding 100 percent of the time with only a ten percent error rate. At 68 degrees, their keying rate went down to 54 percent of the time and their error rate rose to 25 percent.

He concluded that raising the temperature saves employers about $2 per worker an hour in lost productivity.

Critics have said Dr. Hedge?s study was not statistically significant because he had complete data from just nine participants as the rest called in sick, went on vacation or inadvertently covered their sensors with paper. The New York Times reported however that the study is still convincing some employers to boost the temperature in their offices.

Dr. Hedge acknowledged that 77 degrees may be too hot for some and it is hard to find a standard temperature that suits everyone.

There are no national standards for energy conservation in Bermuda nor in the United States, but since 1973?s oil embargo by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the American Department of Energy?s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy suggests that heating be set at 68 degrees in winter and cooling at 78 degrees in summer.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers suggested last year that thermostats be set between 68-76 degrees during the winter, when the humidity is low and 72.5-80 degrees in the summer. The New York Times reported that the subjective guidelines call for 80 percent of occupants to be comfortable and assume ?ten percent dissatisfaction for whole body comfort and additional ten percent for what they characterise as local discomfort? like the neck, hands or feet.?

Here at home, managing director of Bermuda Air Conditioning John Plested said that when his company is the design build mechanical contractor on a new building they follow general engineering recommendations and design that building for an indoor temperature of 74 degrees at 50 percent relative humidity.

?If the humidity rises considerably people will not feel comfortable at 74 and they will tend to drop it down colder than that. If you were in Los Angeles or Nevada, a very dry environment, you would probably be happy with 76 or 78 degrees because it is very dry,? he said.

Offices in Bermuda generally lack central heating, but Mr. Plested that is because they do not actually need it

?Typically what you will do is take the heat in the building and recirculate that back into the occupied space so heat from lights, computers and various equipment adds heat to the building and typically dries it out so humidity will drop in the winter inside a building.?