In this column, we provoke fresh thinking and round up some of the weird, wonderful, quirky, surprising – and shocking – stories out there
Mindfulness lifts boring work
In monotonous jobs, employees who are more mindful are more satisfied with their job, think their job is less boring than do their less mindful colleagues, and are less likely to leave their job, suggests a paper.
Mindfulness, in addition, boosts the quality of work, although not the quantity – dubbed in the study as a “double-edged sword” when it comes to task performance in monotonous jobs. The study, published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, looked at 174 blue-collar workers at a Mexican company who perform highly repetitive tasks.
Mindfulness research has so far focused mostly on white-collar workers while this research seeks to redress the balance in favour of blue-collar workers.
Ensuring high-quality work output in repetitive work conditions can be a challenge for many employers. Mindfulness may help employees experience a sense of mastery in monotonous work conditions by buffering from the negative impact of boredom, the study finds.
The research highlights the ethical framework of mindfulness, suggesting that mindfulness training should be founded on ethical intentions and practices that respect participants’ lives, and not just focused on staff who through being trained boost organisational productivity for their organisation.
The study, It’s so boring – or is it? Examining the role of mindfulness for work performance and attitudes in monotonous jobs, is co-authored by Andreas Wihler of the University of Exeter, Ute Regina Hülsheger of Maastricht University, Jochen Reb of Singapore Management University, and Jochen Menges of the University of Zurich and Cambridge Judge Business School.
Shhhh… or else!
It’ll come as no surprise to many of us quiet-loving souls that noisy offices have an impact on productivity. However, it may be surprising to know that one in five under-30s has resorted to physical violence due to excessive noise levels at work.
Some 60% of office workers say they’re unable to concentrate and are delivering poor quality work due to loud workspaces, finds a poll of 2,000 office workers. The study was carried out by Oscar Acoustics, specialists in architectural acoustic finishes.
Excessive noise is fraying co-worker connections, with a third irritated by colleagues and a fifth (18%) seeing office relationships damaged due to sound levels. Workers report snapping at colleagues (17%), their bosses (12%), raising grievances (16%) and leaving passive aggressive notes (11%). Thankfully, most office workers are resisting the temptation of taking extreme measures, trying to avoid the din by working from home (21%), moving desks (17%), or wearing headphones (23%).
The sounds most likely to stop people from working effectively are colleagues talking to each other (38%), and other people on calls (34%). Colleagues eating (21%), co-workers singing/humming (19%) and a similar number are troubled by others’ bodily sounds (eg, scratching).
Only 20% of respondents think their bosses have done enough to combat the issue.
Common adaptations include installing physical barriers (26%), soundproofing (21%), training for noisy people (25%), and implementing quiet zones (25%). Other adjustments include moving a loud team (18%). One in seven workers said their boss had fired someone for being too noisy. The white paper, Noise Annoys, can be downloaded from: https://bit.ly/3CHdIl1
Music to our ears
Musical training has been linked in many studies to better cognitive functioning but do the effects last? Apparently, they do, according to a longitudinal study published in Psychological Science.
Researchers at Edinburgh University tested 366 people when they were 11 and 70 years old, asking them to decode cyphers, do arithmetic, classify words, and perform spatial tasks, for example.
The researchers found that even when they took into account other factors that might influence the results such as childhood and adult socioeconomic status, years of education and history of disease, people with more musical instrument experience tended to show greater gains in general cognitive ability by age 70.
The level of participants’ musical training wasn’t very high. Most of the participants with musical experience reported having played just one instrument, had only two to five years of formal lessons, up to five years of practice and two to three hours of practice per week during those years, and had only reached beginner level.
Also, the median age for starting to play a musical instrument was 10 and the median age for stopping was 18. Yet, more than 50 years later, the team found evidence of a persistent cognitive benefit.
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Email: liz@coaching-at-work.com