Sunsets are nice. They have beautiful colors and signal the end of the day. They inspire poetry and song. All in all though, I think I prefer sunrises. They signal the onset of a new day. They also inspire poetry and songs although I don’t think quite as many poems and songs as sunsets. Apparently the preponderance of poets and musicians are not up early enough to see sunrises, but do manage to see the sunsets. Go figure. I like sunrises because it is nature’s way of turning on the lights.

When I was a younger person, a long, long time ago, I used to enjoy the night. The sunset would happen (very nice) and then life would begin. As I have gotten older I have now found that the nights are a particularly nice time for sleeping. Perhaps I am fortunate in that I usually have no need for any type of sleep aid other than turning out the lights. My children don’t seem to share this affinity for sleep and hence I don’t seem to be able to sleep as much at night as I would like.

I do get up earlier than them though. Most of the time I get up before sunrise and despite some of my more mischievous urges, I do not go and wake them up as early as I have awoken just to get even with them for keeping me up the night before…..usually.

It seems to me that there is now something of a direct relationship between my energy levels and the amount of light present in my environment. I don’t think I am entirely unique in this respect. I think everyone has had discussions with their friends regarding low energy levels and “blah” days when it is rainy or cloudy outside as opposed to bright sunny days. I know my kids do, but I normally attribute this to the fact that they have probably been up most of the night surfing the internet, playing video games or talking to their friends on the cell phones instead of sleeping like I was trying to do.

Even plants, I guess especially plants do better in the light since their vital link in the ecological chain is to convert light energy and carbon dioxide into chemical energy and oxygen. I find I am very partial to that oxygen thing. The key here is the use of light energy to enable the performance of a necessary task.

Now you may wonder what this relatively long harangue about light in its various forms has to do with business. I will now get to that. After travelling to multiple domestic and international locations over the last several years, I have arrived at significant question:

Is it just me or do our work environments seem to be getting darker?

To this point I am going to make what I think is a subtle but necessary distinction between “sufficient light” and “necessary light” in the office environment. Sufficient light is the amount of light required to conduct day to day functions in your office (or cube) without straining or otherwise causing damage to your eyesight. Necessary light is the amount of light required to generate a brightness or energy in the office environment that adds rather than detracts from your emotional state.

There is obviously sufficient light in our physical business environments for us to conduct our work. This is not a question. Perhaps I am getting older (obviously) or it may just be my imagination but I don’t remember offices being this dark last century.

I threw that “last century” remark in to give a little more feeling to the idea of in times past.

I understand the ideas associated with energy conservation and the high cost of utilities, but could we actually be dimming our office environments in an effort to save money? I have been in many different buildings over time. I seem to remember a time when most office ceiling light fixtures contained the larger (slightly over two inches in diameter) fluorescent tubes. We used to complain about how the bright fluorescent light made us all look so pale.

Now when I look up I see fewer of the larger brighter bulbs, or I see them replaced with the new one inch diameter bulbs, or I see even fewer of the one inch diameter bulbs. I looked it up. The new bulbs use about twenty percent less energy, but they produce about ten percent less light. From an efficiency point of view getting a twenty percent cost reduction while suffering only a ten percent performance reduction is a good trade to make, initially.

It seems that businesses are using fewer light bulbs, and the bulbs that they are using are producing less light.

Now this is a little thing, but in a business environment where we want to capture every iota of efficiency have we possibly missed something here? I understand the hard dollar savings associated with lower energy consumption for lighting the work place. What I am concerned about is the potential soft dollar loss associated with reduction in the efficiency of our teams by making the work environment just that little bit less friendly, appealing, and yes, energetic.

I am not saying that adding lights or generating / providing more lumens in the office will immediately improve productivity. I am saying that it is probably one of the steps that will need to be taken in addition to many others if we are serious about reenergizing (there is that “energy” word again) our work places.

When people started working from virtual offices instead of the standard brick and mortar office we seemed to have lost some of the human interaction and energy that made our organizations vibrant. When we started to implement the energy cost saving measures that seem to have further added to the darkening of our offices (possibly because it is believed that there are not as many people there now so not as much light is needed) we seem to have further reduced the overall energy level of our offices.

I think it is time to turn on or turn up the lights and brighten our work places. I have said in the past that I also believe we need to find ways to get people out of their virtual offices and back into the business environment where they interact face to face. We need to put energy back into our office environments, the light energy that even plants need, but especially the people energy that the business needs. If you are going to try to put the people back in the office, you will need to turn up the lights for them.

Not to go too far overboard here, but I do seem to recall a pretty important quote on this topic. I think it went:

“Let there be light.”