Do You Know What’s Expected of You at Work?

Posted on 2013/02/252013/02/26 by Jason Hensel

A new study from Florida State University shows that less than 20 percent of employees feel certain they know what is expected of them at work. The majority of respondents reported different levels of accountability, anywhere from “some” to “complete” ambiguity.

Assessing more than 750 blue- and white-collar workers in a variety of jobs, the researchers asked first how many employees don’t know what they’re accountable for, and second, what work was like for those who knew what was expected of them compared to those who didn’t. There were considerable differences between those who knew and those who didn’t.

For example, employees uncertain of work expectations reported:

60 percent higher levels of mistrust with leadership as it relates to communication.
50 percent higher levels of overall work frustration.
45 percent less control regarding the best way to complete their work.
40 percent higher levels of work overload.
35 percent fewer work accomplishments to the organization.
33 percent less social and resource support from one’s immediate supervisor.
33 percent greater likelihood of searching for a new job within the next year.
25 percent more job neglect (slacking off, slowing down).

“When employees aren’t sure what’s expected of them, the results simply just cannot be positive, especially when the complexity of work and the pace of change is taken into consideration,” said research associate Allison Batterton.

The reason workers don’t understand what’s expected of them is because of management’s failure to be forthcoming and proactive with communication, most employees say.

“It seems the more that communication is needed, the less likely it is provided — no wonder so many employees feel completely lost at work these days,” said Wayne Hochwarter, the Jim Moran Professor of Business Administration in Florida State University’s College of Business.

The researchers offered four tips to deal with accountability issues:

Set up a formal communication system using the most current and user-friendly technology, and make sure all employees are able to use it effectively.
Make employee accountability part of both the supervisor’s and employee’s performance evaluation.
Develop informal accountability networks (i.e., buddy system) that allow employees real-time access to information needed to effectively focus attention on tasks considered most important for that particular day (or hour).
Make accountability proactive rather than reactive.

“Most employees want to do a good job and contribute to their organization,” Hochwarter said. “Perhaps it’s overly simplistic, but this can only take place when employees know what’s expected. Sadly, many do not, and the situation appears to be getting worse rather than better.”

Do you know what’s expected of you at work?

(Story materials from Florida State University/Barbara Ash. Image via Flickr: DailyM/Creative Commons.)

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Adaptability Linked to Staff Retention

Posted on 2013/02/222013/02/22 by Jason Hensel

Interests change over the course of a career. What you’re passionate about now, you may hate a year later. This change of focus shouldn’t be viewed negatively, though. It’s actually a sign of adaptability, and it should be considered in job evaluations, according to a study from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and published in Human Performance.

The study looked at statistics from professional basketball players for its data and conclusions.

Researchers assessed data on more than 700 members of the NBA to see how players shifted their focus on different on-court skills and tasks over several years. A player displaying high performance scoring baskets in one season might show a shift in focus towards rebounding missed shots in another season. That could be because they were responding to a shift in their team’s needs and/or a change in their coach’s instructions.

Researchers found that about 10 percent of players refocused their efforts over time and were more likely to play again for the league in the next season. The findings support the idea that refocusing among job tasks is an important component of employee adaptability and should be a part of overall performance assessments. As well, they suggest that adaptability is linked to staff retention.

“Our paper is drawing attention to the measurement of performance, that refocusing is something that’s important in the workplace, exists in the workplace, and for organizations to think about it as part of the job, ” said Maria Rotundo, a professor at the Rotman School.

Rotundo is aware of the differences between sports and workplaces.

But “there are parallels,” too, she says, including the fact that NBA athletes are focused on a goal and must work together as a team to achieve it as they confront the different opponents. In the same way, employees in a company must work together to face market competitors and achieve their company’s goals. And just like basketball players who go through changes in their team’s make-up, many workplace staff must adapt to changes brought on by restructuring or the adoption of new technologies, requiring a refocus in their job’s tasks.

How easily do you adapt to changes in the workplace? Does your focus change year over year?

(Story materials from University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Image via Flickr: Keith Allison / Creative Commons.)

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Mediocre Managers Damage Staff Engagement

Posted on 2013/02/152013/02/16 by Jason Hensel

Imagine a Michael Scott (or if you like, David Brent) type of boss. Some of you may prefer him. Others may feel he’s a bit much. But would you rather work under his personality or a boss whose personality is mediocre?

According to new research from Kingston University in London, England, mediocre managers are just as bad as the Michael Scotts of the world.

A survey of 500 employees and 120 managers found that not owning up to mistakes, relaying stress, and telling rather than consulting with staff were some of the most harmful actions of mediocre managers. The researchers found that these types of behaviors eroded staff motivation and well-being.

“Many people will at some time in their working lives have been managed by someone whose over-the-top behavior [such as] telling offensive jokes and cultivating ‘teachers’ pets’ highlighted a lack of self-awareness and a major inability to manage people,” said Dr. Rachel Lewis, a lecturer at Kingston Business School. “However, our findings demonstrate that it’s actually the less obvious, mediocre managers who too often ‘fly under the radar’ in organizations, that may inadvertently cause stress and could actually be just as damaging to staff engagement over time.”

The research shows that, in order to get the best out of employees, managers should

Handle pressure with calmness
Take responsibility when things go wrong
Get to know staff as individuals
Be invested in an employee’s career development
Ask employees if they are OK

“The aim of this research is to support human resources departments, employers and managers by providing a behavioral framework that identifies what managers need to do in order to create long-lasting employee effectiveness,” Lewis said. “The framework can be used to support managers in developing the core people management skills to enable them to get their teams motivated and working at a consistently high level.”

(Story materials from Kingston University.)

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The Real World Effects of Facebook Unfriending

Posted on 2013/02/072013/02/07 by Jason Hensel

I’ve never understood why people choose to crop their list of friends on Facebook. Sometimes, I’ll see statements like, “If you see this message, congratulations, you made the cut.” It makes me wonder if I really want to associate with someone who willy-nilly cuts friends out of his life.

Sure, I understand deleting friends because of personality issues. Deleting friends “just because”, though, is petty. It also can have real-world consequences.

A new study from the University of Colorado Denver shows that 40 percent of people surveyed would avoid anyone in real life that deleted them from a friends list on Facebook.

“The cost of maintaining online relationships is really low, and in the real world, the costs are higher,” said study author Christopher Sibona, a doctoral student in the Computer Science and Information Systems program at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. “In the real world, you have to talk to people, go see them to maintain face-to-face relationships. That’s not the case in online relationships.”

Sibona says that when a friendship ends in real life, it usually just fades away. It’s more abrupt on Facebook.

“Since it’s done online there is an air of unreality to it but in fact there are real life consequences,” he said. “We are still trying to come to grips as a society on how to handle elements of social media. The etiquette is different and often quite stark.”

Sibona conducted a study in 2010 on why people delete friends. He found four main reasons.

Frequent, unimportant posts.
Polarizing posts usually about politics or religion.
Inappropriate posts involving sexist, racist remarks
Boring everyday life posts about children, food, spouses etc.

He says that when people are socially excluded in real life, they experience lower self-esteem, depressed moods, and loneliness.

“People who are unfriended may face similar psychological effects…because unfriending may be viewed as a form of social exclusion,” Sibona said. “The study makes clear that unfriending is meaningful and has important psychological consequences for those to whom it occurs.”

Remember that the next time you get a hankering to chop down your friends list. You’re doing more damage than you think.

(Story materials from the University of Colorado Denver / David Kelly. Image via Flickr: Gina Trapani / Creative Commons.)

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Sunny, Flirty Days

Posted on 2013/01/282013/01/30 by Jason Hensel

When single, I conducted most of my flirting late at night in dark bars after a few drinks to stimulate courage. Any other time and I was a complete mute.

Perhaps, though, I should have attempted to flirt in the daytime, specifically when it’s sunny. According to a new study, women are more receptive and offer their phone numbers more often when approached during a sunny day.

“In a field quasi-experiment, 18–25-year-old women walking alone in the street were approached by an attractive 20-year-old male confederate who solicited them for their phone numbers,” Nicolas Guéguen wrote in the study‘s abstract. “The women were solicited on days that were evaluated as being either sunny or cloudy but care was taken to control for temperature and not to solicit participants when it rained. It was found that women agreed more often to the confederate’s courtship solicitation on the sunny days.”

Caution, though. The sunny day may have put the women in a better mood or caused more confidence in the men. Seriously, who wants to flirt when it’s overcast and rainy outside? Just go to a bar (and flirt there!).

Guéguen also offers another caveat: France.

“In this study, we examined the receptivity of women to a courtship request by a man because it was conducted in France where men traditionally approach women in romantic relationships,” he wrote.

Wait. Is he suggesting that French women are more open to extracurricular activities outside a steady relationship?

(Image via Flickr: Andy Cross / Creative Commons)

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Exhausted Women are Hypersensitive to Sound

Posted on 2013/01/25 by Jason Hensel

FYI, guys, if an exhausted woman is stressed out, keep the noise level to a minimum.

According a study from Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University’s Stress Research Institute, women suffering from stress-related exhaustion show hypersensitivity to sounds.

The study exposed 208 women and 140 men, ages 23 to 71–all emotionally exhausted–to five minutes of physical stress, such as hands in ice, mental stress tests, and observational stress.

The researchers found that exhausted women found sounds–some as low as 60 decibel (level of normal conversation)–more uncomfortably loud than non-exhausted women. The same results were found in men, but the differences weren’t statistically significant. The researchers say that there was no difference in sensitivity to sounds between the groups before the stress exposure.

“When you are hypersensitive to sound, some normal sounds, such as the rattle of cutlery or the sound of a car engine, can feel ear-piercing,” said Dan Hasson, associate professor at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and affiliated with Stockholm University’s Stress Research Institute. “Given how common it is for people to work in environments with different kinds of disturbing sounds, this hypersensitivity can be really disabling for certain individuals.”

Do sounds disable you when you’re exhausted?

(Image via Flickr: Steve Hall / Creative Commons)

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You’re More Creative When Bored at Work

Posted on 2013/01/092013/01/10 by Jason Hensel

I would never say I’m bored at work (hey, boss!), but I will say that there are times when my productivity voyage encounters the horse latitudes.

That’s not a bad thing, because according to a recent study, boredom at work can increase creativity since it gives us an opportunity to daydream.

Dr. Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman, both from the University of Central Lancashire, presented the study this week at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Chester.

They conducted two studies. The first one asked 40 people to complete a boring task (transcribing numbers from a telephone book) for 15 minutes. They were then asked to complete another task (imagining various uses for a pair of Styrofoam cups). This second task evaluated their creativity.

The results showed that those who transcribed telephone numbers were more creative in their uses of the cups than a control group that just worked on the cups.

The second study investigated the role of daydreaming by adding a different boring job to a group. Thirty people transcribed telephone numbers; however, another group of 30 participants read the numbers rather than write them.

Mann and Cadman found that the reading group was more creative than those who had to write the numbers out. This raises the possibility that boring tasks, “like reading or perhaps attending meetings,” leads to more creativity.

“Boredom at work has always been seen as something to be eliminated, but perhaps we should be embracing it in order to enhance our creativity,” Mann said. “What we want to do next is to see what the practical implications of this finding are. Do people who are bored at work become more creative in other areas of their work–or do they go home and write novels?”

When I read all day at work, the last thing I want to do is go home and work with words more. That’s just that immediate day, though. During work lulls, I do come up with ideas that turn into writing projects at a later time, so maybe there is something to this study.

Are you more creative when you’re bored at work?

(Story materials from the British Psychological Society. Image via Flickr: eggmergency / Creative Commons)

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Hot Chocolate’s Taste Influenced by Cup Color

Posted on 2013/01/032013/01/03 by Jason Hensel

Color is a powerful persuader. Red cars appear faster than other cars. Blue rooms are relaxing and help spur creativity. Now you can add that orange or cream-colored containers cause hot chocolate to taste better.

“The color of the container which serves food and drinks can enhance some of its attributes, such as taste or odor,” said Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The researcher worked with Charles Spence of Oxford University on the study.

The researchers conducted an experiment where 57 participants had to evaluate samples of hot chocolate served in four types of plastic cups, all the same size but of different colors: white, cream, red, and orange with white inside.

The results, published in Journal of Sensory Studies, showed that participants liked best the hot chocolate served in orange and cream-colored containers.

However, the sweetness (not the flavor) and aroma were not influenced by the cup’s color.

“There is no fixed rule to say that a taste or flavor is enhanced with a particular color or tone,” Piqueras-Fiszman said. “This actually varies with the type of food, but the fact is that, as the effect occurs, more attention should be paid to the color of the packaging, as it has more potential than you can imagine.”

This should encourage chefs and hospitality professionals to think more about the color of the tableware and packaging. For example, blue cups seem to quench thirst better, while pink packaging makes items seem more sweet.

(Story materials from SINC. Image via Flickr: Smokers High Life / Creative Commons)

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Greed Is More Often Paid Forward Than Generosity

Posted on 2013/01/022013/01/02 by Jason Hensel

Paying it forward is a great concept and one that should be practiced more often. However, it’s more common to find people repaying greed with greed.

“The idea of paying it forward is this cascade of goodwill will turn into a utopia with everyone helping everyone,” said lead researcher Kurt Gray, PhD. “Unfortunately, greed or looking out for ourselves is more powerful than true acts of generosity.”

The study, published online in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, is the first of its kind to examine the notion of paying forward generosity, equality, or greed.

“The bulk of the scientific research on this concept has focused on good behavior, and we wondered what would happen when you looked at the entire gamut of human behaviors,” said Gray, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who conducted the study with researchers at Harvard University.

According to the study:

In five experiments involving money or work, participants who received an act of generosity didn’t pay generosity forward any more than those who had been treated equally. But participants who had been the victims of greed were more likely to pay greed forward to a future recipient, creating a negative chain reaction. Women and men showed the same levels of generosity and greed in the study.

In one experiment, researchers recruited 100 people from subway stations and tourist areas in Cambridge, Mass., to play an economic game. They told participants that someone had split $6 with them and then gave them an envelope that contained the entire $6 for a generous split, $3 for an equal split, or nothing for a greedy split. The participants then received an additional $6 that they could split in another envelope with a future recipient, essentially paying it forward.

Receiving a generous split didn’t prompt any greater generosity than receiving equal treatment, but people who received nothing in the first envelope were more likely to put little or nothing in the second envelope, depriving future recipients because of the greed they had experienced. The average amount paid forward by participants who received a greedy split was $1.32, well below an equal split of $3.

The results confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that greed would prevail because negative stimuli have more powerful effects on thoughts and actions than positive stimuli. Focusing on the negative may cause unhappiness, but it makes sense as an evolutionary survival skill, Gray said. “If there is a tiger nearby, you really have to take notice or you’ll get eaten,” he said. “If there is a beautiful sunset or delicious food, it’s not a life-or-death situation.”

The study also examined whether people would have similar reactions involving work rather than money. In one online experiment, researchers told 60 participants that four tasks needed to be completed, including two easy word association games and two boring, repetitive tasks that involved circling vowels in dense Italian text. They explained to the participants that someone had already split the work with them, leaving them the two fun tasks in a generous split, one fun task and one boring task in an equal split, or both boring tasks in a greedy split. The participants then had to complete those tasks and split an additional four tasks with a future recipient. The results were the same, with greed being paid forward more than generosity.

“We all like to think that being generous will influence others to treat someone nicely, but it doesn’t automatically create a chain of goodwill,” Gray said. “To create chains of positive behavior, people should focus less on performing random acts of generosity and more on treating others equally — while refraining from random acts of greed.”

(Story materials from the American Psychological Association. Image via Flickr: Scabeater / Creative Commons)

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Take One Step at a Time on Stairs

Posted on 2013/01/012013/01/01 by Jason Hensel

My office is located on the 17th floor of a glass building in Dallas. There are four elevators that can take me to my floor quickly, depending on the time of day. During times that I’m waiting for an elevator’s doors to open, I’ve often considered taking the stairs and walking up all 17 flights to my office. Then, of course, an open elevator appears.

Starting tomorrow, though, I’m walking up those stairs one step at a time. Sure, I can bound up them and reach my floor quicker, but according to recent research in PLoS, taking them one at a time burns more calories.

“The advice to those seeking to utilise stair climbing specifically as a method to control or reduce weight is to ascend stairways one step at a time; more calories are burned through this form of stair climbing,” the study’s authors wrote. “For example, climbing just a 15 m high stairway five times a day represents an energy expenditure of on average 302 kcal per week using the one step strategy and 266 kcal using the two step strategy.”

If you’re using a two-step strategy, you’ll have a much harder and quicker workout, expending more energy. However, if you take one step at a time, you’ll expend less energy but take longer to reach your destination, thus ensuring burning more calories.

What exercise routines are you starting this year?

(h/t to Scientific American. Image via Flickr: Dan Eckert / Creative Commons)

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An IQ Test Alone Can’t Explain Intelligence

Posted on 2012/12/192012/12/20 by Jason Hensel

We, as humans, tend to ascribe a lot of weight to numbers. Perhaps that’s an easy way for us to make sense of the world. Consider, though, IQ scores. Can you accurately judge a person’s intelligence by an IQ test?

Not according to a recent study from Western University scientists who found that measuring a person’s IQ by a single, standardized test is misleading.

The scientists–who used an online study open to everyone worldwide and included more than 100,000 participants–asked people to complete 12 cognitive tests on memory, reason, attention and planning abilities. Participants were also asked about their backgrounds and lifestyle habits.

“The uptake was astonishing,” said Adrian M. Owen, the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging and senior investigator on the project at Western’s Brain and Mind Institute in London, Canada. “We expected a few hundred responses, but thousands and thousands of people took part, including people of all ages, cultures and creeds from every corner of the world.”

Result’s from the study showed

that when a wide range of cognitive abilities are explored, the observed variations in performance can only be explained with at least three distinct components: short-term memory, reasoning and a verbal component.

No one component, or IQ, explained everything. Furthermore, the scientists used a brain scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to show that these differences in cognitive ability map onto distinct circuits in the brain.

With so many respondents, the results also provided a wealth of new information about how factors such as age, gender and the tendency to play computer games influence our brain function.

“Regular brain training didn’t help people’s cognitive performance at all yet aging had a profound negative effect on both memory and reasoning abilities,” Owen said.

“Intriguingly, people who regularly played computer games did perform significantly better in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory,” said Adam Hampshire from Western’s Brain and Mind Institute. “And smokers performed poorly on the short-term memory and the verbal factors, while people who frequently suffer from anxiety performed badly on the short-term memory factor in particular.”

If you’re interested in helping with this research, the scientists have launched a new version of the tests at http://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/theIQchallenge.

(Story materials and image from Western University.)

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Why You Should Get Outside More Often

Posted on 2012/12/172012/12/18 by Jason Hensel

I’ve been in a bit of a creative rut lately. I’ve also been meaning to go camping for a while now. Could the two be related?

Yes, say psychologists in a new study. David Strayer (University of Utah), Ruth Ann Atchley (University of Kansas), and Paul Atchley (University of Kansas) found that backpackers scored 50 percent better on a creativity test after spending four days in nature disconnected from electronic devices.

“This is a way of showing that interacting with nature has real, measurable benefits to creative problem-solving that really hadn’t been formally demonstrated before,” Strayer said. “It provides a rationale for trying to understand what is a healthy way to interact in the world, and that burying yourself in front of a computer 24/7 may have costs that can be remediated by taking a hike in nature.”

The results aren’t surprising.

“Writers for centuries have talked about why interacting with nature is important, and lots of people go on vacations,” Strayer said. “But I don’t think we know very well what the benefits are from a scientific perspective.”

According to the study published December 12 in PLOS ONE, an online journal published by the Public Library of Science:

The study involved 56 people – 30 men and 26 women – with an average age of 28. They participated in four- to six-day wilderness hiking trips organized by the Outward Bound expedition school in Alaska, Colorado, Maine and Washington state. No electronic devices were allowed on the trips.

Of the 56 study subjects, 24 took a 10-item creativity test the morning before they began their backpacking trip, and 32 took the test on the morning of the trip’s fourth day.

The results: people who had been backpacking four days got an average of 6.08 of the 10 questions correct, compared with an average score of 4.14 for people who had not yet begun a backpacking trip.

“We show that four days of immersion in nature, and the corresponding disconnection from multimedia and technology, increases performance on a creativity, problem-solving task by a full 50 percent,” the researchers said.

The researchers caution that the study wasn’t conducted to “determine if the effects are due to an increased exposure to nature, a decreased exposure to technology or the combined influence of these two factors.”

“It’s equally plausible that it is not multitasking to wits’ end that is associated with the benefits,” Strayer said.

Yeah, maybe it’s about time I book that camping trip and recharge my creativity.

(Story materials from the University of Utah. Image via Flickr: Perfectance / Creative Commons.)

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