Just a Quick Question? Relationships between Workplace Intrusions and Employee Outcomes
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Just a Quick Question? Relationships between Workplace Intrusions and Employee Outcomes Charlotte Fritz 1
& Dev
K. Dalal 2 & Bing C. Lin 3
Received: 18 December 2019 / Revised: 10 August 2020 / Accepted: 10 September 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract While common in many workplaces, intrusions –i.e., interruptions in task progress while engaged in a task – have not been well studied yet. Building on conservation of resources theory and the job demands-resources model, we examined relationships between intrusions, increased fatigue, and decreased perceived job performance. Three pilot studies were conducted to develop a survey measure of intrusions and to establish its psychometric properties. The main study examined relationships between intrusions at the beginning of the workweek and fatigue and perceived job performance over the course of the week. Results indicate that intrusions on Monday were indirectly related to increased fatigue on Thursday through increased fatigue on Tuesday and Wednesday. Results were not significant for perceived job performance. The results highlight the relevance of intrusions at work for employee experiences beyond the day on which they occur pointing to a loss of individual resources over the course of the workweek. Keywords Intrusions . Interruptions . Perceived performance . Fatigue
* Charlotte Fritz [email protected] Dev K. Dalal [email protected] Bing C. Lin [email protected]
1
Department of Psychology, Portland State University, PO Box 751, Portland, OR 97207, USA
2
Department of Psychology, University at Albany: State University of New York, Social Sciences 399, Albany, NY 12222, USA
3
International Business Machines (IBM), 3039 E Cornwallis Rd, Research Triangle, Durham, NC 27709, USA
Occupational Health Science
In today’s work organizations, employees often are part of complex work projects and processes that create high levels of task interdependence (Griffin et al. 2007). This requires frequent communication and coordination in work teams which increases the likelihood of intrusions – i.e., interruptions while in the middle of a core work task (Leroy and Schmidt 2016). In addition, the increased use of communication technologies at work (e.g., instant messaging, email, text messaging) adds to the frequency and forms of intrusions employees experience. Intrusions may be necessary in the modern workplace to facilitate instantaneous information sharing – a process beneficial for creativity (Perry-Smith and Shalley 2003) and performance at both the team-level (Srivastava et al. 2006) and organizational-level (Dyer and Nobeoka 2000). At the same time, research has started illustrating the potentially detrimental effects of intrusions on employees. For example, experimental research shows reduced performance in both the task one is initially engaged in as well as the task for which one is being interrupted (Altmann and Trafton 2007; Speier et al. 1999, 2003). Therefore, it is important to develop valid measures of intrusions, as well as to bett
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