Come work for us, we’ve got air conditioning. Given the state of the world, it’s not a terrible pitch.
After the latest heatwave in Europe toppled temperature records in the UK, Spain and France, Alan Chang, founder and CEO of London-based Fuse Energy, posted on LinkedIn about his office’s commitment to air conditioning, promising to run it at 22°C, 365 days a year.
Chang also announced the creation of a “human performance team”, with the first hire for that being “a workplace performance manager, owning everything that makes our people sharper and more productive, pushing the absolute limit of human performance.”
The job spec offers some clues as to what the role entails. This performance guru will “lead relationships” with landlords, building management and key suppliers to “maintain exceptional workplace standards”.
This sounds like a standard chief of staff or COO role, but here comes a wellness twist: this person will also lead employee health initiatives such as flu shots, the job spec reads.
There were plenty of thumbs up for the idea on LinkedIn, but also a few quibbles about the optimum performance temperature — 21.5°C was better, someone wrote.
‘Chief vibes officer’ territory
Chang isn’t the first tech boss to talk about performance-inspiring hires. Last year, Lovable boss Anton Osika mused about hiring one, though he apparently hasn’t yet.
It's surprising no one else has done this: the industry lionises performance after all, however you want to define it. So many of the podcasts tech heads listen to religiously are filled with executives sharing ways to squeeze some mythical performance boost out of their teams.
Chang's definition of high performance was no doubt shaped by his time at Revolut, which he joined as the fintech's fifth employee when he was 21. The culture there is famously exacting, and Chang has presumably carried the same expectations with him to Fuse, which he founded in 2022.
I can imagine positive aspects to an internal wellbeing champion. People burn out all the time in tech, and it might be nice if someone was there to remind you to take a breather from the bottomless inbox slog.
I also see the potential for this to become invasive. Remember when Oura, the Finnish company behind the sleep tracking ring, briefly floated connecting sleep data to Slack, so coworkers could see how well or poorly you’d slept. That drew a swift negative reaction — and the idea got tossed in the bin.
Would it be weird if some guru at your company started dishing out tips on how employees could sleep better? Or sneak more fibre into their breakfast?
“It runs the risk of entering 'chief vibes officer’ territory, which is a sure sign a startup has too much money and is hiring frivolously,” says Cherry Swayne, a tech recruitment specialist in London.
More questions than answers
A spokeswoman for Chang declined to comment further. I'd have liked to ask: what would happen if a performance manager decides the best solution for someone is less work? How would that go down in a hard-charging office? I'll take a guess: not well.
Having staggered through the heatwave in Paris last week, I noticed my own output dip, so Chang's reminder of the benefits of A/C feels timely.
But what about remote workers? Should companies treat buying them fans to survive Europe's increasingly hot summers as part of the same productivity drive? I'd expect this idea to be controversial for those — like Chang — who believe stridently in in-office work.
Thorny questions like these are what makes this whole experiment worth watching.
