Research Design Connections: At-Work Activity and Energy
Zhang and colleagues link specific work activities and energy levels; their findings may be useful to designers developing at-work break/refreshment zones, for example. The Zhang-lead team found “a time allocation effect, such that for a given period of the workday (i.e., the morning or the afternoon), the greater the proportion of time a knowledge worker spent in meetings relative to individual work, the less this person engaged in microbreak activities for replenishment during that period. The reduction in microbreak activities, in turn, harmed energy. We also found a pressure complementarity effect in the morning (though not in the afternoon), such that when a meeting involved low pressure in the presence of high-pressure individual work or vice versa, when a meeting involved high pressure in the presence of low-pressure individual work, such complementarity benefited energy.” Chen Zhang, Gretchen Spreitzer, and Zhaodong Qui. “Meetings and Individual Work During the Workday: Examining Their Interdependent …
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