Have you ever noticed employees standing around visiting
during working hours and wondered if their conversation was
job-related? Do you ever tire of saying "O.K., let's get back to work,"
while avoiding employees' wounded stares as you walk away?
You can imagine the scene: One person is working
steadily, and a second person interrupts to start a
conversation. The talking attracts attention and pretty soon
others join in . . . lots of talk, not so much work.
Now, imagine a slightly altered scene. The person working
steadily is wearing stereo headphones and is plugged in to a
device that plays music. The second person, interested in a
little conversation, approaches and notices the headphones.
Does that make a difference? Do people avoid interrupting
others if they're listening to music on stereo headphones?
How about you? Do you leave people alone who're wearing
headphones . . . when they're jogging? When your kids are
studying?
Greg Oldham, from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, recently led a team of researchers who
explored the effects of allowing employees to use stereo
headphones at work, and some of their findings may surprise
you.
Professor Oldham and his team approached 256 employees of
a large retail organization who worked in an office
environment. They came from 32 different job titles which
ranged from processing invoices to analyzing accounts. Many
did routine work. Of 256 employees, 130, or 50% expressed an
interest in listening to music through headphones while they
worked. The rest did not want the distraction.
Oldham, et al., randomly divided the first group and
assigned half to a music-listening group and half to a
no-music group for a 4-week period. Before, during, and
after the test, the researchers made numerous measurements of
all employees so they could make comparisons. They
attributed differences they detected to the stereo
headphones. Here's what they learned.
People holding simple jobs that required little training
dramatically increased their job performance if they were
allowed to listen to music on the personal headsets. Their
satisfaction with their jobs and with the organization
improved, and they registered a decline in intentions to look
for new jobs.
People holding complex jobs that required much training
suffered performance declines if they were allowed to use the
headsets, and their satisfaction also declined.
Next, Oldham, et al., examined the variety of factors they
had measured searching for an explanation for these findings.
They found that for employees with simple, routine jobs,
enhanced relaxation caused their increases in performance,
while decreases in distractions improved their attitudes
toward their jobs and the company. The obvious conclusion:
people perform routine, simple jobs more effectively if
they're relaxed, and stereo headsets improve people's
relaxation. Also, people's satisfaction with their jobs
improves if they can escape the many interruptions from
coworkers that occur throughout the workday. The headphones
reduce these interruptions.
Stereo headphones that play music, rather than news,
sports, or interviews, will boost performance and job
satisfaction for your simplest job holders, but for others,
it will have the opposite effect.
What to do?
Try rating the job titles in your company on these
criteria:
Business Practice Findings, by James Larsen, Ph.D.
Listen While You Work?
Researchers discover a simple personnel practice that boosts both performance and satisfaction for some employees.
Jobs emerging as simple, routine, and monotonous that don't require the use of hearing would be good candidates for allowing personal stereo headsets.
Of course, you're going to have to manage this practice so volume level doesn't interfere with others and doesn't harm users' hearing. And you'll have to explain why some people can use them while others can't, but these things you can do. Allowing the use of headphones is something you can do for your lowest level employees that will improve both performance and satisfaction without costing you a cent. You could do worse.
Reference: Oldham, Greg R., Anne Cummings, Leann Mischel, James Schmidtke, and Jin Zhou (1995) Listen While You Work? Quasi-Experimental Relations Between Personal-Stereo Headset Use and Employee Work Responses. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80 (5), pp. 547-564.