Climate control.

How's the climate in your office? The workplace atmosphere in which your employees labor daily has a significant, quantifiable impact on their performance, according to a recent study.

A team of emotional intelligence experts at Six Seconds Institute for Organizational Performance examined six "climate factors"--accountability, collaboration, leadership, alignment, adaptability and trust--to find out just how each one affects employee performance, which was measured as a combination of customer service, job performance and retention. The climate factors are likely to have a major impact on an organization's bottom line, according to the report, because high scores in these factors predict high scores in customer service, individual performance and employee retention.

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Joshua Freedman, director of the study and of the institute, says there are two key findings from the study that can help leaders improve performance.

"First," says Freedman, "there is a measurable and strong link between how your people feel [about the organization] and how they perform. Second, different groups in your organization have dramatically different drivers of performance."

Research scientist Carina Fiedeldey-Van Dijk showed in the study how specific elements of the climate predict performance in each area. In customer service, for example, 47 percent of the difference between low and high scores is predicted by the factors of accountability, collaboration and alignment. In the retention area, 43.4 percent of the difference is predicted by leadership, alignment and collaboration.

Researchers also identified five accurate demographic groupings that don't follow traditional demographics:

* Educated long-serving employees (junior or senior) of a large organization.

* Nonexecutive long-serving employees.

* Moderately experienced young female employees in an industry.

* Nonindustrial loyal executives.

* Experienced older male executives.

Members of each of these groups tended to give similar answers to the survey, which challenges common beliefs about people in different job levels, according to the study.

"If you really want to understand the people in your organization," says Fiedeldey-Van Dijk, "you've got to look beneath the surface." Understanding the differences between subgroups in the organization, the study notes, lets leaders and HR professionals more effectively manage the people side of the business.