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Workers Are Less Productive and Make More Typos in the Afternoon – Especially on Fridays
An innovative new study from the Texas A&M School of Public Health offers objective insight on employee behavior [tamu.edu] and the potential benefits of flexible work arrangements:
If there's one thing most office workers can agree on, it's that they tend to feel less productive toward the end of the day and the end of each work week. Now, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University has found objective evidence of this phenomenon in action.
A recent interdisciplinary study at the Texas A&M School of Public Health [tamu.edu] used a novel method of data collection to show that employees really are less active and more prone to mistakes on afternoons and Fridays, with Friday afternoon representing the lowest point of worker productivity.
[...] "Most studies of worker productivity [tamhsc.edu] use employee self-reports, supervisory evaluations or wearable technology, but these can be subjective and invasive," said Benden, professor and head of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. "Instead, we used computer usage metrics — things like typing speed, typing errors and mouse activity — to get objective, noninvasive data on computer work patterns."
The team then compared computer usage patterns across different days of the week and times of the day to see what kinds of patterns emerged.
"We found that computer use increased during the week, then dropped significantly on Fridays," said Roh, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. "People typed more words and had more mouse movement, mouse clicks and scrolls every day from Monday through Thursday, then less of this activity on Friday."
In addition, Roh said, computer use decreased every afternoon, and especially on Friday afternoons.
[...] What is the takeaway for employers? To start, flexible work arrangements, such as hybrid work or a four-day work week, may lead to happier and more productive employees.
Journal Reference:
Roh T, Esomonu C, Hendricks J, Aggarwal A, Hasan NT, Benden M (2023) Examining workweek variations in computer usage patterns: An application of ergonomic monitoring software. PLoS ONE 18(7): e0287976. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287976 [doi.org]
