Singapore, 9 March 2012 (Friday) – With the reliance on the web as a key source of information, news, communication and entertainment, it is getting increasingly difficult for employers to differentiate between hard work versus loafing in the workplace. The prevalence of ‘cyberloafing' – when work time is spent on an unrelated online activity – brings challenges for managers around the world. A new study funded by the Singapore Management University (SMU) has found that people are less able to exercise self-restraint and are more prone to cyberloafing when they lack sufficient sleep. Researchers argue that employers can reduce their employees' cyberloafing activities if they encourage their employees to get a sufficient amount of sleep.
The research was led by Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources David Wagner at SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business, together with his colleagues Christopher Barnes (Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech University), Vivien Lim (NUS Business School, National University of Singapore) and Lance Ferris (Smeal College of Business, The Pennsylvania State University).
The researchers wrote: "In the push for high productivity, managers and organisations may cut into the sleep of employees by requiring longer work hours. This may promote vicious cycles of lost sleep, resulting in less time spent working, which could result in more frantic pushes for extended work time. Managers may find that by avoiding infringement on employee sleep, they will get more productivity out of their employees."
The findings are also particularly significant in light of the annual shift in daylight saving time. This year, most parts of North America will lead the exercise on 11 March 2012, followed by some parts of Europe and other regions. According to the research, come next Monday (12 March 2012) after the annual shift to daylight saving time, when clocks are set one hour ahead and people get less sleep than normal, employees are likely to spend more time than normal surfing the web for content unrelated to their work, and causing potentially massive productivity losses.
While a few minutes of personal web surfing now and then may seem harmless, given that about one-third of the world's countries participate in some form of daylight saving time, the researchers say that "global productivity losses from a spike in employee cyberloafing are potentially staggering." In light of their discovery and other research on the true energy-saving effects of daylight saving time, the authors encourage policymakers to revisit the costs and benefits of the time change policy.
Research Methodology
The team of researchers examined six years worth of data from Google and found that Web searches related to entertainment rose sharply the Monday after the shift to daylight saving time, as compared to the preceding and subsequent Mondays. With prior research showing that people exhibit poorer self-control when they are tired, the researchers argue that the lost sleep due to the time change, an average of 40 minutes that Sunday night, makes employees less likely to self-regulate their behaviour and more inclined to spend time cyberloafing, or surfing the Internet for personal pursuits while on the clock.
They also conducted a lab experiment in which they monitored subjects' sleep the night before they were required to watch a boring lecture online. The less sleep the subjects received the night before, the more time they spent surfing the Web when they were supposed to be watching the lecture. Interruptions in sleep had the same effect. In fact, the subjects on average engaged in cyberloafing during 20 percent of the assigned task for every hour of interrupted sleep the night before.
Recommendations
On the practical implications for managers, the researchers recommend that employers can reduce cyberloafing (and thereby increase productivity) if they encourage their employees to get quality sleep. Outside of that, they recommend that managers can minimise the temptation by their staff to cyberloaf by restricting access to certain websites – such as YouTube.com – while on company computers. Another option could be to position computer screens so that supervisors or colleagues can monitor them, or even providing designated break times when personal Internet use would be permissible.
"Lost Sleep and Cyberloafing: Evidence from the Laboratory and a Daylight Saving Time Quasi-Experiment" is forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Enclosures
Full article entitled "Lost Sleep and Cyberloafing: Evidence from the Laboratory and a Daylight Saving Time Quasi-Experiment"
Photo 1 – Caption: Since its establishment in 2000, SMU has rapidly built up a university environment that generates high-quality research with professional relevance and applications in Asia and beyond. (Available upon request)
Photo 2 – Caption: David Wagner, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University (Available upon request)