Perceptions of time at work

Abstract

Purpose – Activities such as making personal phone calls, surfing on the internet, booking personal appointments or chatting with colleagues may or may not deviate attentions from work. With this in mind, the purpose of this paper is to examine gender differences and motivations behind personal activities employees do at work, as well as individuals’ perception of the time they spend doing these activities. Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained from 35 individuals (M age=37.06 years; SD=7.80) from a Portuguese information technology company through an ethnographic method including a five-day non-participant direct observation (n=175 observations) and a questionnaire with open-ended questions. Findings – Results revealed that during a five-working-day period of eight hours per day, individuals spent around 58 minutes doing personal activities. During this time, individuals engaged mainly in socializing through conversation, internet use, smoking and taking coffee breaks. Results revealed that employees did not perceive the time they spent on non-work realted activities accurately, as the values of these perceptions were lower than the actual time. Moreover, through HLM, the findings showed that the time spent on conversation and internet use was moderated by the relationship between gender and the leisure vs home-related motivations associated with each personal activity developed at work. Originality/value – This study contributes to the literature on human resource management because it reveals how employees often perceive the time they spend on non-work related activities performed at work inaccurately. This study highlights the importance of including individual motivations when studying gender differences and personal activities performed at work. The current research discusses implications for practitioners and outlines suggestions for future studies.

Yiyecek İçecek İşletmelerinde Nomofobinin İşgören Verimliliğine Etkisi (The Effect of Nomophobia on Employee Productivity in Food and Beverage Businesses)

“…Bunların yanısıra işgören verimliliğinin diğer bazı unsurlardan etkilendiği de söylenebilir. Yapılan birçok araştırmada (Lim & Chen, 2009;Ferreira & Esteves, 2016;Fox, 2007;Yılmaz, 2019) sanal kaytarma eyleminin verimliliği etkilediği ve işletmelere ciddi maliyetler yarattığı ortaya konulmuştur. İlgili literatürden hareketle işgören verimliliğinin birçok faktörden etkilendiği görülmektedir.…”

“…Faktör analizi ile faktör gruplarının toplam varyansı açıklama oranı da tespit edilir (Büyüköztürk, 2011: 123) Diğer taraftan işgören verimliliği de teknolojik, kültürel, motivasyonel olmak üzere çeşitli unsurlardan etkilenebilmektedir (Aksuoğlu, 2020). Sanal kaytarma eyleminin de verimliliği etkilediği daha önceki çalışmalarda ortaya konulmuştur (Lim & Chen, 2009;Ferreira & Esteves, 2016;Fox, 2007;Yılmaz, 2019). Tüm bunlar bir arada düşünüldüğünde bu çalışmada elde edilen sonuçların literatürdeki çalışmalara paralellik gösterdiği yorumu yapılabilir.…”

A Review of Cyberloafing Predictors in Literature

“…Men spend more time than women in surfing the Internet (Ferreira & Esteves, 2016). Also, researchers noted that men and women have different purposes of Internet use; women use the Internet for social interaction while men use the Internet for entertainment (Lim & Nam, 2016).…”

Metrics of Presenteeism and Its Relations With Cooperation: An Empirical Evidence

“…Whether for structural, organizational and institutional issues, for organizacional enviroment susceptible to posture, or even for more implicit reasons, such as a way to deal with stress, the search for pleasure, by dissatisfaction or lack of meaning in the task performed, the worker is physically present at work but absent in mind, behavior and in capability of performing his tasks in a productive way. Aiming to reduce his own frustration and dissatisfaction and to satisfy his psychological needs and vices, he silently simulates his own performance (D'Abate, 2005;D'Abate & Eddy, 2007;Eddy, D'Abate, & Thurston, 2010;Ferreira & Esteves, 2016;Page, 2015;Paulsen, 2015;Saarvala, 2006;Vijayakumar, 2015). Paulsen (2015) subsidizes this debate about the influence of organizational and personal factors in presenteism, combining representative axes of worker subjectivity and work objectivity.…”