The modern workplace suffers from no shortage of distractions, which can be incredibly stressful in the way it prevents us from doing what we need to do.  Indeed, the recent State of Work report from Workfront highlighted how ‘work was getting in the way of work’.  The biggest culprit, in their eyes at least, were meetings, which respondents reported took up far too much time and were insufficiently useful.

New research from the University of Houston explores just how stressful distractions in the workplace can be.  The researchers conducted experiments using thermal imaging and wearable sensors to try and gauge the stress people were feeling at work.

A number of standout findings emerged from the research.  Perhaps least surprising of them was that presenting our findings to senior managers was far more stressful than producing them in the first place.  They also highlight a number of findings related to the production of such reports, including the fact that when we have more time to work on them, that time tends to be spent making them look nicer than on making them longer.  We also rely heavily on spell checkers in such written pieces of work.

“When you are stressed, you don’t realize this, but you perspire small amounts of from your nose. The more you are stressed, the more you sweat,” the researchers say. “We also found people who have neurotic tendencies work better when they are regularly distracted by emails and the highly-educated worker relies too much on computerized tools such as spellcheck.”

Distracted at work

The volunteers in the research were tasked with completing a written assignment, with emails proving a constant distraction for them.  Half received a drip feed of emails throughout the task, with the other half receiving all of their emails in one dump.

Through a combination of thermal facial recognition software for tracking sweat levels, wearable devices tracking heart rate and breathing rate, and cameras designed to capture facial expressions and hand activities, the researchers believe they captured a robust picture of modern working life.

“This study was a comprehensive microcosm of all things happening in a 21st century office,” they say. “Crowdsourced data analysis is expected to lead to personalized recommendations for handling email interruptions and a deeper understanding of how people cope with different office activities. If the initial analysis we did is an indicator, the conclusion is that people who work at the office in knowledge professions have far more diverse responses than people in other professions we studied in the past.”