"I’m Bored!": How To Make Your Work More Stimulating

by ARC Laureate Professor Sharon Parker

About Sharon

Sharon is a globally-renowned expert in the field of work psychology. As the Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design, she leads a team concerned with improving the quality of work. She is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow; a Chief Investigator in the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing, and a 2019 Highly Cited Researcher.

I was in a zoom chat with some friends recently, and friend number 1 commented on how bored they were in their work. “Lucky you!” said my friend number 2 “I wish I had time to be bored!”.

Boredom at work sounds harmless and even like a luxury. But, boredom is a highly aversive mental state that can be distressing and dissatisfying. I could see friend number 1’s face when friend number 2 said she was lucky, and what I saw flick across her face was sadness and frustration.

When you are working and not experiencing meaning or not using your skills or doing the same thing over and over, time can seem to stretch out for ever.

Research shows, if you experience chronic boredom, you will be more likely to skip work, leave your job, have an accident, use drugs and alcohol to an excess, and even ‘misbehave’ at work by engaging in ‘counterproductive work behaviors (such as stealing or cheating) (Schaufeli & Salanova, 2014).

You can check your own work-related boredom using the quiz at the bottom of the page.

Why do people get bored at work?

People experience boredom for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes there is simply not enough tasks to do; a situation referred to as ‘quantitative underload’ (Fisherl, 1993).

Boredom also occurs when the work is repetitive and monotonous, lacks variety, and doesn’t use your skills or – in a nutshell - is not stimulating, which is the “S” in the SMART work design model. A non-stimulating job is referred to as having ‘qualitative underload’.

As an example, long haul pilots sometimes experience boredom because they mostly watch over the ‘autopilot’ with very little need for human intervention, and they need to engage in this vigilance task over long periods of time (Grose, 1988). Another example is a person who is overqualified for the job – such a person might experience boredom because s/he has more qualifications and skill than is used on the job (Liu & Wang, 2012).

Right now, both quantitative and qualitative underload might occur for you because some of your projects are on hold due to COVID-19, or perhaps because you are working at home and so can't complete some of your more interesting tasks.

In fact, boredom can actually also occur when you are chronically overloaded – constantly managing meeting after meeting, endless paper work, information overload, and the like, can get dull, after a time, partly because your work begins to lose meaning. I’ll talk about this sort of boredom in a later blog; here I will focus on boredom arising from underload.

What can I do to be less bored?

If you are experiencing significant levels of boredom in your work, what can you do?

Well, it is not a good time to quit your job, which might be one recommendation if you have a job that is chronically boring and holding you back.

Cyberloafing is another frequent response that researchers have shown occurs when people are bored at work (Pindek et al., 2018). But cyberloafing is not a response that is going to help you be productive and hence support the economy.

So what to do?

Crafting your job as a solution

People self-initiate changes to their jobs to increase the fit between their job and their skills, abilities, and interests, which is referred to as “job crafting”. This concept was introduced in the USA by Professors’ Amy Wriznieski from and Jane Dutton (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001), and has since been investigated by many scholars around the world (including scholars in the Centre for Transformative Work Design (Zhang & Parker, 2019).

Studies show that people who engage in crafting are more engaged in their work and less bored, and also experience a number of other benefits such as improved performance (Zhang & Parker, 2019).

How do I craft my job to make my work more stimulating?

Many different types of crafting exist. Professor Maria Tims from the University of Amsterdam (and a frequent visitor to our centre) has identified several types of crafting (Tims et al., 2012).

Here I will focus on the three most relevant to boredom.

1. Increase ‘structural job resources’, or those aspects of your job that help you achieve your work and career goals, such as having opportunities for development and having a high level of job autonomy. Example actions you can task:

• Negotiate more decision-making autonomy from your boss

• Ask to be allowed more control over your work hours

• Learn new skills that will be helpful when the pandemic ends (eg. to cope with digitalization in the future)

• Ask a colleague to teach you something new

• Learn something you’ve always wanted to learn

I saw a nice example of this sort of crafting recently, in which an allied health professional (who wasn’t able to do her work fully from home so was a bit bored) took the opportunity to learn Auslan. She knew this would be a helpful skill when her work returns back to normal.

2. Increase the challenging aspects of your work, or those aspects of your job that will increase how stimulating your work is. Examples of such crafting include:

• Take on extra tasks that suit your skills or interests

• Give more emphasis to work tasks that suit your skills or interests

• Offer help to colleagues

• Ask to get involved in a new project

• Go above and beyond the call of duty to help customers and clients

• Develop a new and improved way of doing things

• Improve your work systems (e.g., automate the boring tasks)

• Expand tasks you are exceptionally good at or have a strength in

A study of 1630 Finnish employees showed that if you seek out new challenges in your work, this reduces boredom and increases work engagement (Harju et al., 2016).

3. Increase social resources, or the relationships and networks in your job. Example ways to craft your social resources include:

• Ask for feedback from your supervisor

• Build new relationships

• Organize special events in the workplace

• Arrange a virtual morning tea

• Choose to mentor some employees

• Gather feedback from your clients

• Talk to people about how they do their work

• Ask for advice

Once I was about to do a talk on job crafting. I was being filmed, so a make up artist did my makeup before the talk. She told me about how, one of the ways she had made her job more interesting, was to volunteer to work with transgender people. This new work and new relationships then led to all sorts of interesting opportunities for her work, and increased the sense of meaning she felt in her work. I thought this was a great example of job that I as then able to share with the audience.

4. Cognitively craft your job, that is, reframe how you think about your work or change your mindset. For example:

• Consider how your work positively impacts others’ lives

• Think about how your work affects the broader community

• Remind yourself about the importance your work has for the success of your company or team

One study (Dutton et al., 2000) showed that hospital cleaners crafted their job in very different ways. Whereas one group of cleaners disliked cleaning and tried to keep their tasks and interactions to a minimum, cleaners in a second group saw themselves not just as ‘cleaners’ but as ‘healers’. As a consequence of this cognitive crafting, they engaged in behaviors such as talking to patients and showing visitors around, which improved the meaning of their work and increased the smooth running of the hospital.

Get ideas for crafting your job by talking to others

If you are short on ideas, try talking to your supervisor and/or your colleagues. Let them know you are looking for more variety in your work, or that you have some un-used skills you are keen to use.

Sometimes addressing boredom through crafting might require support or authority from others. For example, in our team, some of our operations team have less to do because – for example – we’re no longer running events, or organising travel. So we’ve made a decision to keep tasks in house that normally we might outsource, such as copy editing, transcribing, and website development. This means the operations team have the chance to do some different tasks and learn new skills.

Also talk to others who do similar work to you – what are they doing to make their work more stimulating and to give it more meaning?

Being bored in your work isn’t “lucky”. Its a corrosive mental state, and it can eat away at you and your well-being.

If you’re bored today at work, identify one action from the list in the blog and implement it.

Let me know if it makes a difference.

Quiz: Check Your Job Boredom

If you agree with one or more of these items, boredom is likely to be a problem for you.

• At work, time goes by very slowly

• At my job, I feel restless

• It seem as if my working day never ends

• During work time, I day dream

[Based on the Dutch Boredom Scale, Reijseger et al., 2013]

Resources and links

Job crafting: https://positivepsychology.com/job-crafting/

More on the importance of job crafting: https://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/What-is-Job-Crafting-and-Why-Does-it-Matter1.pdf

Watch this YouTube video by Rob Baker here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dd3RpD5FrU

Watch this YouTube video by Amy Wrzesniewski here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_igfnctYjA

References Dutton, J. E., Debebe, G., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2000). A social valuing perspective on relationship sensemaking. Ann Arbor.(Working paper).

Fisherl, C. D. (1993). Boredom at Work: A Neglected Concept. Human Relations, 46(3), 395-417. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679304600305

Grose, V. L. (1988). Coping with boredom in the cockpit before it's too late. Risk Management, 35(8). https://search.proquest.com/docview/226994185?pq-origsite=gscholar

Harju, L. K., Hakanen, J. J., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2016). Can job crafting reduce job boredom and increase work engagement? A three-year cross-lagged panel study. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 95-96, 11-20. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2016.07.001

Liu, S., & Wang, M. (2012). Perceived Overqualification: A Review and Recommendations for Research and Practice. In L. P. Pamela, R. B. H. Jonathon, & C. R. Christopher (Eds.), The Role of the Economic Crisis on Occupational Stress and Well Being (Vol. 10, pp. 1-42). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3555(2012)0000010005

Pindek, S., Krajcevska, A., & Spector, P. E. (2018). Cyberloafing as a coping mechanism: Dealing with workplace boredom. Computers in Human Behavior, 86, 147-152. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.04.040

Reijseger, G., Schaufeli, W. B., Peeters, M. C. W., Taris, T. W., van Beek, I., & Ouweneel, E. (2013). Watching the paint dry at work: psychometric examination of the Dutch Boredom Scale. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 26(5), 508-525. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2012.720676

Schaufeli, W., & Salanova, M. (2014). Burnout, boredom and engagement at the workplace. In M. C. W. Peeters, J. d. Jonge, & T. W. Taris (Eds.), An Introduction to Contemporary Work Psychology. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Tims, M., Bakker, A. B., & Derks, D. (2012). Development and validation of the job crafting scale. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(1), 173-186. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2011.05.009

Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179-201. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378011

Zhang, F., & Parker, S. K. (2019). Reorienting job crafting research: A hierarchical structure of job crafting concepts and integrative review. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 40(2), 126-146. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2332

Switching Off: Recovering After A Long Day At The Desk

by ARC Laureate Professor Sharon Parker

About Sharon

Sharon is a globally-renowned expert in the field of work psychology. As the Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design, she leads a team concerned with improving the quality of work. She is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow; a Chief Investigator in the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing, and a 2019 Highly Cited Researcher.

What will you do this evening? Keep working? Watch a movie? Drink seven glasses of wine?

What you do tonight, and every work evening, affects your mental health. This is because work requires energy, and you need to replenish the energy and resources you have used at work. This process is referred to as recovery.

Check out your own recovery with this quick quiz, based on Sonnentag & Fritz's (2007) Recovery Experience Measure:

In a typical evening after work, how many of these apply to you?

- I forget about work

- I distance myself from work

- I take time for leisure

- I do non-work things that challenge me

- I learn new things outside of work

- I feel like I can decide my own schedule

- I feel I can decide for myself what I want to do

For anyone answering NO to four of more of these questions… you could well be vulnerable to longer-term burnout.

What steps can you take to improve your recovery?

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that physical exercise and a good night’s sleep are two very important determinants of effective recovery.

There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence about the value of exercise for mental health and recovery.

Intervention studies, for example, show that increasing your exercise reduces your anxiety and depression (Rebar et al., 2015) and helps you get over burnout more quickly (Toker & Biron, 2012). See this useful guidance from the World Health Organization.

Likewise, poor sleep is negative for your well-being. For example, one study showed that sleep duration of less than six hours per night predicted the development of clinical burnout over a two-years (Söderström et al., 2012). A meta analysis has shown if you experience insomnia, you have more than two-fold risk of developing depression than persons who sleep well (Baglioni et al., 2011).

Good sleep is a protective factor that helps to reduce the risk of impaired well-being.

Sleep hygiene is essential and that means no mobile phones under your pillow! For tips on getting a good nights sleep, check out this resource from Better Health Victoria.

As to other activities that help, the key is to focus on how you feel when you are doing the activity (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007). There are two especially important questions you can ask yourself about your evening activity:

Question 1: Am I mentally detaching?

Researchers often use a design where they measure your feelings and behaviors in the day, in the evening, and then in the morning. From these sorts of studies, the best predictor of your next day recovery, such as feeling relaxed, has been shown to be whether you have mentally disconnected from work.

If you are discussing with your partner at length all the things that have gone wrong that day at work, this is not detaching. If you are on your mobile phone or doing your emails, this is also not detaching, and will be negative for recovery (Park et al., 2011).

Mentally detaching is just about ‘not working’ in the evening, but also not thinking about work.

And in particular, the sort of thinking that is especially bad for detaching is ruminating about negative aspects of work or worrying about work issues (in fact, pondering a interesting work-related problem or thinking positively about work tends to be okay in terms of recovery; see Weigelt et al., 2019).

For workaholics, who find it hard to detach, research shows that physical exercise is an especially important way to recover (Bakker et al., 2013).

So, whether you are watching Married at First Sight, going for a jog, or having dinner with friends, try to mentally detach from work in the evening. This advice might not sound like rocket science – but are you doing it?

Question 2: Am I learning something that’s different to what I do at work?

I find it hard to detach from work - unless I’m actively focusing on something else. Swimming helps me to detach because I’m trying to learn to become a better swimmer. The whole time I swim, I’m thinking about lifting my elbow high, and rotating, and breathing properly. It actually doesn’t matter in the scheme of things whether I become a good swimmer – but trying to get better at it gives me something to think about other than work, and actually getting better gives me a sense of achievement and mastery.

Research supports the idea that learning something new, or mastering a skill, in a domain outside of work promotes recovery (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007).

In fact, some of our own research shows that if you engage in an activity in which you feel like you are learning new skills in the evening, you will feel more enthusiastic and confident the next day, and hence you are more likely to be proactive and self-starting in your work (Ouyang et al., 2019).

If you are someone who struggles to detach, perhaps its time to learn a new skill. Tango lessons anyone?

Two further important questions to ask to assess whether the activities you are doing in the evening will foster recovery are ‘do I feel relaxed?’ and ‘do I feel in control of my activities?’ Both of these feelings – when experienced during evening activities - foster next day recovery.

The Recovery Paradox

The recommendation to “recover” from your work might sound pretty straightforward. But there is an important contradiction here to consider.

The recovery paradox (Sonnentag, 2018) is that if you have a super-demanding day or job, you are most in need of recovery because your resources will be run down. And yet you are also less likely to engage in recovery activities.

For example, studies show that when people experience a high level of stressful job demands, they detach less from their jobs (Wendsche & Lohmann-Haislah, 2017), they do less physical exercise and sport (Stults-Kolehmainen & Sinha, 2014), and they have worse sleep (Litwiller et al., 2017). It seems that interpersonal conflicts or problems, as well as threats to a person’s self-esteem (e.g., poor performance) especially increase the chance of sleep disturbances (Brisette & Cohen, 2002; Pereira et al., 2014).

It is perhaps not very surprising that recovery is impaired in you’re in a demanding job - if you have high work load and time pressure, then you might be inclined to work at night to cope with the load, which means you don’t switch off and you don’t go out and learn new activities, or do exercise, so you don’t properly recover, which will impair your sleep, and make you more tired the next day, and so the wheel of exhaustion gets going. I’m going to tackle how you might reduce your work demands in another blog as its too big a topic to cover here.

For now, if you have very high demands in your job, remember that for you, recovery is even more important and necessary for your mental health. So beware the recovery paradox and make recovery a priority for you.

Maybe tonight is a good night to start – get off your laptop and watch a movie, go for a walk in this beautiful autumn evening, or master a new skill.

References

Baglioni, C., Battagliese, G., Feige, B., Spiegelhalder, K., Nissen, C., Voderholzer, U., Lombardo, C., & Riemann, D. (2011). Insomnia as a predictor of depression: A meta-analytic evaluation of longitudinal epidemiological studies. Journal of Affective Disorders, 135(1), 10-19. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.01.011

Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., Oerlemans, W., & Sonnentag, S. (2013). Workaholism and daily recovery: A day reconstruction study of leisure activities. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34(1), 87-107. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1796

Brissette, I., & Cohen, S. (2002). The Contribution of Individual Differences in Hostility to the Associations between Daily Interpersonal Conflict, Affect, and Sleep. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(9), 1265-1274. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672022812011

Litwiller, B., Snyder, L. A., Taylor, W. D., & Steele, L. M. (2017). The relationship between sleep and work: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(4), 682-699. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000169

Ouyang, K., Cheng, B. H., Lam, W., & Parker, S. K. (2019). Enjoy your evening, be proactive tomorrow: How off-job experiences shape daily proactivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(8), 1003-1019. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000391

Park, Y., Fritz, C., & Jex, S. M. (2011). Relationships between work-home segmentation and psychological detachment from work: the role of communication technology use at home. Journal of occupational health psychology, 16(4), 457.

Pereira, D., Meier, L. L., & Elfering, A. (2013). Short-term Effects of Social Exclusion at Work and Worries on Sleep. Stress and Health, 29(3), 240-252. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.2461

Rebar, A. L., Stanton, R., Geard, D., Short, C., Duncan, M. J., & Vandelanotte, C. (2015). A meta-meta-analysis of the effect of physical activity on depression and anxiety in non-clinical adult populations. Health Psychology Review, 9(3), 366-378. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2015.1022901

Söderström, M., Jeding, K., Ekstedt, M., Perski, A., & Åkerstedt, T. (2012). Insufficient sleep predicts clinical burnout. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 17(2), 175-183. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027518

Sonnentag, S. (2018). The recovery paradox: Portraying the complex interplay between job stressors, lack of recovery, and poor well-being. Research in Organizational Behavior, 38, 169-185. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.11.002

Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007). The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: Development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3), 204-221. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.12.3.204

Stults-Kolehmainen, M. A., Bartholomew, J. B., & Sinha, R. (2014). Chronic Psychological Stress Impairs Recovery of Muscular Function and Somatic Sensations Over a 96-Hour Period. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 28(7), 2007-2017. https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0000000000000335

Toker, S., & Biron, M. (2012). Job burnout and depression: Unraveling their temporal relationship and considering the role of physical activity [doi:10.1037/a0026914]. American Psychological Association.

Weigelt, O., Syrek, C. J., Schmitt, A., & Urbach, T. (2019). Finding peace of mind when there still is so much left undone—A diary study on how job stress, competence need satisfaction, and proactive work behavior contribute to work-related rumination during the weekend. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 24(3), 373-386. https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000117

Wendsche, J., & Lohmann-Haislah, A. (2017). A Meta-Analysis on Antecedents and Outcomes of Detachment from Work [Review]. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(2072). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.02072

How to Make Your Work from Home SMARTer

by Shannon Chen and Professor Sharon Parker

For a printable copy of this article, click here.

A regular day’s work in the office can be challenging enough with an endless stream of meetings, the office’s only printer being overloaded with print jobs, and constantly moving client deadlines. Imagine how much more demanding work can be when it is conducted from home when there are the usual challenges of work, coupled with the commitments and distractions of home! A potential recipe for heightened stress and burnout….

Other people might experience the reverse challenge: that is, not quite enough that’s engaging and interesting to do in order to keep them focused on the work. Under such circumstances, it might be very difficult for workers to stay motivated and productive.

Fret not! There is a way to maintain your productivity and well-being. That is to create work at home that is SMART.

What is SMART work design, and why does it matter?

Good work design practices have been shown to have a significant impact on how individuals feel at work, and affects their work motivation [1][2], engagement [2] and well-being [3][4][5][6].

The SMART work design model (see smartworkdesign.com.au) was developed by Australian Research Council Professor, Sharon Parker, at Curtin University’s Centre for Transformative Work Design in the Future of Work Institute. This framework is based on decades of research on work design.

The model outlines five key elements to consider when creating meaningful, interesting and motivating work, as well as work that is free from stress.

The five elements of the SMART work design model are summarised below:

These aspects of SMART work design can be applied to the situation of people working from home, which is a form of ‘remote working’.

How SMART applies to remote working

A study of telecommuters from industries such as banking, health care, education, technology, and social services noted that telework was positively associated with not only higher self-ratings of task performance but also greater supervisor-rated performance [7]. Autonomy, in the form of employee’s control over their work environment (“A” in the SMART model), was shown to have contributed to the positive relationship between telecommuting and greater perceptions of task performance.

Further, a recent review of the literature on remote workers’ well-being found that greater levels of autonomy inherent with remote e-work functioned as a resource that buffered against emotional exhaustion and promoted job satisfaction [8].

This review also reported that social support was one of the resources that was depleted when employees worked remotely for prolonged periods of time. Without social support, employees experienced greater emotional exhaustion. Social support is an important part of the Relational work characteristics in the SMART work design model.

Research also shows that some workers at home often experience interference from home demands, especially female workers [9], which can make their work load unmanageable (and hence low on “T” for Tolerable demands).

These findings show that the Agency, Relational and Tolerable aspects of SMART work design are especially likely to be affected by remote working, yet all are crucial for well-being and productivity. As discussed in her video, Professor Parker argues that well-being and productivity are especially vital aspects to consider at this time of enhanced stress and a fragile economy (see "Working From Home: Why Should We Care About This Topic?").

Crafting SMARTer work

Crafting refers to the self-initiated steps that people take to change their work designs themselves. Your job is includes tasks, activities, and relationships. Each of these aspects can be ‘crafted’ to create a better fit between your work and you.

Although your job tasks and responsibilities are likely to be defined primarily by managers and by the objectives of your organisation, there is still usually some scope to adjust the SMART aspects of your job so that they better fit your individual needs and preferences.

For example, you may be able to exercise some control (or Agency) over when or how often you do certain tasks. You might also change the nature or degree of interactions with people in your work to improve Relational aspects of your work.

The key point here is that YOU can redesign certain parts of your current work experience to make work motivating, meaningful and satisfying - even if that work occurs from home.

Here are some tips on how you could make working from home more Stimulating, Mastery-oriented, Agentic, Relational, and Tolerable:

1. Make your work from home more engaging (Stimulating)

● Create variety and interest in your work by sharing knowledge and collaborating with others. For example:

• Knowledge sharing – identifying and sharing tips on how to work from home Sharing tips and what works to cope with remote work;

• Coaching others in their area of expertise – to help build up your ability to coach;

• Setting up a session with a colleague to test and explore the functions of communication tools such as Zoom or Webex, or experiment with team coordination tools such as Trello.

● Seize the day and learn about something new: Keep learning – this could be a perfect opportunity, especially if your work demands have lessened, to build a certain skillset that might be relevant to future work

2. Enhance your effectiveness whilst working at home (Mastery)

● Stay motivated by increasing task identity:

• Break your time into several smaller chunks and allocate specific tasks for those time frames.

• Use an alarm or alert on your computer or phone – set time limits for each of your tasks.

• Try the Pomodoro technique to work in short bursts.

• All of these actions establish a sense of achievement when you complete a set of tasks within the allocated time frame.

● Use goal setting and time management techniques to keep yourself on track

• Set goals, including longer-term goals, weekly goals, and daily goals for yourself. This way you know exactly what you are trying to achieve.

• Manage your time to ensure you spend time on your goals, and do not get too distracted by other activities (see Agency for more time management strategies).

● Role Clarity: Ask yourself,

• Do I have clear planned goals and objectives for the job?

• Am I clear about what had to be done?

• Do I know what my colleagues and/or supervisor expect of me?

If you don’t know what you’re meant to be doing, seek clarification – by making a call or dropping an email.

● Feedback

• Be sure you are clear about how you are progressing. Ask your team members/ manager for feedback if you are not sure.

• Obtain feedback from your customers/ clients or other stakeholders. Ask what is working well and what is not.

3. Exercise your autonomy in productive ways (Agency)

● Work Scheduling:

• Match the right type of work with the right type of environment in advance.

• now your working preferences, and try to structure your day around these preferences.

• Developing a weekly routine.

• Encourage your manager to trust you to decide your own hours (within reason), and to focus on managing your results rather than micromanaging your presence at the desk (see Professor Parker's video and blog, "Tethered or Trusted? The 'There's No Excuse Not To Be At Your Desk' Phenomenon".

● Work Methods/Decision-making autonomy: Researchers studying part-time teleworkers found that, on the days that workers set goals for themselves, they reported greater job satisfaction [10].

Self-goal setting involves:

• Establishing specific goals for your work efforts;

• Consciously working towards achieving those goals;

• Thinking about other goals you would like to achieve in the future.

Create SMART goals: Goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

● Time Management/Work Scheduling

Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, proposed a useful and simple time management model. Covey suggested that people spend time in four ways, which can be captured along two dimensions – urgent responsibilities that require immediate attention and important responsibilities that contribute to your goals [11].

The following matrix illustrates these dimensions and proposes actions to take:

• MANAGE: High urgency and importance. Requires immediate management and attention.

• FOCUS: High importance, but low urgency. Requires strategic planning and focus because this quadrant has long-term importance. Careful planning here will reduce Quadrant A tasks.

• AVOID: High urgency, but low importance tasks. These activities are distractions that get in the way of your goals and should be avoided where possible.

• LIMIT: Low urgency and importance. These are obvious time-wasting activities that hold little value for you. Try to limit these as much as possible.

One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to spend too much time on the tasks that are urgent, irrespective of importance (including both the MANAGE and AVOID tasks). This can mean we ignore tasks that are important but not yet urgent (FOCUS tasks). Not putting time into the FOCUS tasks can backfire in the longer term, as these will become more urgent and transform into MANAGE tasks.

Click here for more tips and advice from Australian female laureates.

4a. Create support and connection to address social isolation (improving the Relational aspect of your own work)

● Regularly seek to remain in touch with colleagues:

• If you’re accustomed to having lunch or coffee with colleagues, plan a quick social phone or video call to each other at lunchtime

● Recreate ‘watercooler conversations’ virtually:

• These are informal, unplanned interactions that happen every day which are important for working as a team and building relationships. Your team can set up virtual morning teas or lunches, for example.

● Develop and maintain relationships

• Make room in your calls with co-workers to talk about things unrelated to the job

• Share a funny story about your adventures at home

• Take some time to think of questions you can use when conversation stalls

• Consider ways in which your colleagues and friends might like to be supported – with phone calls, errands or assistance with grocery shopping (extra-role behaviours/organisational citizenship behaviours that contribute to a positive work environment)

● Ask yourself:

• How can I protect myself from feeling lonely or isolated?

• How can I recreate unplanned parts of the workday, such as lunch hour or cappuccino conversations with colleagues?

• What tools can I use to stay connected with friends, family and colleagues?

● Build high quality connections

• Respectfully engage with others – this means fully attend and be present, and then list. Ask questions and really listen to the answers instead of waiting for a turn to talk

• Enable others to do their tasks effectively by engaging in small acts that help them

• See Professor Parkers’ video and blog post, "High Quality Connection (And We're Not Talking About The Internet)".

4b. Improve coordination with your team mates while you work from home (improving the Relational aspect of your team work)

● Set up your team for success

• See Professor Parker’s blog and video on “Set Up Your Team for Success During COVID-19 Virus” where she advocates providing support for the team, clarifying how team members will work together, and keeping the big picture in mind.

● Review team business hours

• Come together as a team to clarify and set out expectations on the work hours that team members have to be present and available.

• For example, there might be some common hours where all the team members are working, and you might ask for people to let each other know if there are times they are not available.

● Foster mutual understanding of work responsibilities, tasks and due dates

• Make sure you know what each member is working on and when their work is due, and follow this up with calls and emails. Inform your supervisor of any problems you may experience with completing your work.

• Openly consider whether your teams goals and priorities should change amidst the current circumstances.

● Discuss any problems or issues via a phone or video call

• To better clarify issues or concerns – instead of using multiple emails

• Make deliberate efforts to be available.

• Collate phone numbers, email addresses and other social media connections

5. Make the demands in your work manageable (Tolerable Demands)

● Establish a dedicated workspace and get dressed:

• Create a space that is separate from general living as possible to establish some boundaries between home and work

• Avoid working on your bed or in your bedroom

• If possible, try to set your space up to feel similar to your office space

• Try getting dressed in work clothes at the beginning of the day, and into non-work clothes at the end of the day to help activate a worker identity and mark a boundary between work and non-work (see Professor Parker’s blog post and video ‘To Dress or Not to Dress: Getting Into a Work Mindset’).

● Home boundaries and routines:

• If social distancing measures escalate and schools are shut down, children are likely to be home most of the time. Parents may need to establish routines and take turns supervising very young children. In these situations, work may need to be conducted in a flexible manner.

• Try to set boundaries with your family, explaining that during working hours, your office (or dedicated work space) is a quiet zone.

• Have routines to mark the start and end of a working day.

• Tag team with your partner to ensure that you share child care fairly, and don’t assume that the ‘female’ in a dual career family simply because of her gender.

● Manage the temptation to do house work during working hours:

• Don’t procrastinate on work tasks by first doing some housework – set yourself a target to complete a work task and when you’ve finished it – then spend ten minutes doing the tidying.

• Where possible, attend to house matters outside of your pre-determined working hours

● Have a finish time:

• Finish about the time you normally would – and stick to it. If your start and end times are too variable, use lunch time as an anchor to determine when you should end your day.

• If you finish on time and allow yourself the space to have some down time, you won’t fall into working all day and all evening.

• Respond to off-hour messages between your working hours.

● Get moving to combat sedentary work and promote recovery:

• Walk away from your desk – engage with family and friends. Recovery from work is crucial to ensuring you feel rested and productive for the next work task or day.

• Get moving with some physical activity, such as a brisk walk or gentle stretching.

● Be kind to yourself and practice self-compassion

• As Professor Parker argues in her video and blog post, Be Kind To Yourself: Self-Compassion In Difficult Times, sometimes when demands get too much, it is important to be kind to yourself. This sometimes means lowering your expectations, and not “beating yourself up” when, for example, you are not achieving everything you hope.

With these tips and strategies, we hope you will find a way to make work SMARTer. For more resources, check out our SMART work website, and our Thrive At Work website.

References

[1] Humphrey, S. E., Nahrgang, J. D., & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Integrating motivational social and contextual work design features: A meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1332–1356.

[2] Parker, S. K. (2014). Beyond motivation: Job and work design for development, health, ambidexterity, and more. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 661-691.

[3] Nieuwenhuijsen, K., Bruinvels, D., & Frings-Dresen, M. (2010). Psychosocial work environment and stress-related disorders, a systematic review. Occupational Medicine, 60, 277-286.

[4] Theorell, T., Hammarström, A., Aronsson, G., Träskman Bendz, L., Grape, T., Hogstedt, C., Marteinsdottir, I., Skoog, I., & Hall, C. (2015). A systematic review including meta-analysis of work environment and depressive symptoms. BMC Public Health 15, no.1.

[5] Stansfeld, S., & Candy, B. (2006). Psychosocial work environment and mental health—a meta-analytic review. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 32, 443-462.

[6] Parker, S. K., Morgeson, F. P., & Johns, G. (2017). One hundred years of work design research: Looking back and looking forward. Journal of applied psychology, 102(3), 403.

[7] Gajendran, R. S., Harrison, D. A., & Delaney-Klinger, K. (2015). Are telecommuters remotely good citizens? Unpacking telecommuting’s effects on performance via I-deals and job resources. Personnel Psychology, 68, 353-393.

[8] Charalampous, M., Grant, C. A., Tramontano, C., & Michailidis, E. (2019). Systematically reviewing remote e-workers’ well-being at work: a multidimensional approach. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 28 (1), 51-73.

[9] Hill, E. J., Jacob, J. I., Shannon, L. L., Brennan, R. T., Blanchard V. L., & Martinengo, G. (2008) Exploring the relationship of workplace flexibility, gender, and life stage to family-to-work conflict, and stress and burnout, Community, Work and Family, 11(2), 165-181,

[10] Muller, T., & Niessen, C. (2019). Self-leadership in the context of part-time teleworking. Journal of Organization Behaviour, 40, 883-898.

[11] Mueller, S. (2017). Stephen Covey’s time management matrix explained. Retrieved from Planet of Success http://www.planetofsuccess.com/.