The Power of Guilt: Understanding Employee Absenteeism

Most of us probably believe that a link exists between a person's attendance record at work and his or her job satisfaction.  The employees who show up every day must be more satisfied than those who opt to stay home a fair bit, right?  Not so fast. Interestingly, the data do not support the beliefs most of us hold about absenteeism and job satisfaction.  

An interesting new study helps us understand what's really going on in the workplace.  Rebecca Schaumberg and Francis J. Flynn examined more than 300 customer service associates at various call centers.   The scholars measured job satisfaction, and they tracked the employee's attendance at work over a four month period.   Interestingly, they also administered a survey to evaluate how "guilt prone" each individual was.  What did they discover?  If individuals were not very susceptible to feelings of guilt, then attendance and job satisfaction are positvely corelated.  In other words, the more dissatisfied people are, the more likely they are to miss work.  That's what we would expect.  However, things change when we examine people who are higly "guilt prone."  For these people, no relationship exists between attendance and job satisfaction.  These people sometimes keep right on showing up for work, even if they are very unhappy, because of their feelings of guilt.  

The lesson is clear - be careful how you interpret a strong attendance record on the part of employees.  Low absenteeism may not signal that you have created a terrific work environment where people love to come to work.  It may tell more about the personal attributes of your workers, and what motivates them to act each morning.  

Does Variety Make Us Happier?

We have all heard the expression, "Variety is the spice of life."  Is it true?  Do we value variety highly?  Does it make us happier?  Years ago, social psychologists Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham developed their now-famous job characteristics model.  They argued that five key characteristics affected outcomes such as job satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and quality of work produced.  One of those job characteristics was skill variety.   If a job required employees to employ a variety of skills and capabilities, that had a positive effect on these key outcomes.   

New research by Jordan Etkin and Cassie Mogilner looks at variety in a slightly different context.  They conducted a series of experiments to explore whether engaging in a variety of activities increased happiness. They found that variety had a positive impact, but only if that variety did not occur in a very short period of time. Etkin explains in this article from Duke's Fuqua School of Business:

"It seems the pivot point is around a day," Etkin said. "We find that over longer periods of time — a day, a week or a month — spending time on more varied activities does lead people to feel happier afterwards. But over shorter time periods — an hour, 30 minutes or 15 minutes — people feel less happy after spending time on more varied things."

Etkin went on to explain why too much variety in a short period of time could have a negative effect on happiness:

"When people think about variety, they think it's exciting, stimulating and interesting. But we also derive a lot of happiness and satisfaction from feeling we accomplished something with our time. What we find is that shorter time periods really don't give people enough time to transition between varied activities and still feel productive."

Does Busywork Actually Make Us Happier?

Rachel Emma Silverman of the Wall Street Journal reported this week on a new study by University of California-Irvine's Gloria Mark and co-authors from Microsoft Research.   Mark and her colleagues tracked 32 workers at Microsoft for more than 1,500 hours.  They found that people's moods brightened when they performed busywork (i.e. rote activities), and they were less happy when they tackled challenging tasks.   The article quotes Mark:  “Focus involves a kind of stress and people aren’t generally happy when they are stressed,” says Dr. Mark. By contrast, “rote work is effortless, so you can get gratification for getting things done.”

What do I make of these findings?  I think we have to take them with a large grain of salt.  Years of research on intrinsic motivation shows that people value work in which:

• they have autonomy
• they feel that they are making a contribution to a greater goal
• they find challenging and rewarding
• there is some variety in the tasks being performed over time

What accounts for the difference in the findings?  Well, if you evaluate people in the moment, I think you get different answers.  In other words, the Microsoft study appears to examine people who are performing challenging work, and then from time to time, they perform some busywork.   Of course, the busywork may be a great relief, a nice break from their tough duties.  However, that's not the same as saying busywork is always mood brightening.  If all you did was rote work, you might not be so happy.   So, busywork can lighten the mood, but perhaps only when it comes in small doses amidst a stream of work that has the characteristics I listed above in bullet points.