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Study Finds Swearing at Work Boost Morale
The AFP reports that a new study indicates swearing at work might boost employee spirit.
Regular swearing at work can help boost team spirit among staff, allowing them to express better their feelings as well as develop social relationships, according to a study by researchers.
Yehuda Baruch, a professor of management at the University of East Anglia, and graduate Stuart Jenkins studied the use of profanity in the workplace and assessed its implications for managers.
They assessed that swearing would become more common as traditional taboos are broken down, but the key appeared to be knowing when such language was appropriate and when to turn to blind eye.
The pair said swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be seriously discouraged or banned, but in other circumstances it helped foster solidarity among employees and express frustration, stress or other feelings.
"Employees use swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative, abusive manner," said Baruch, who works in the university's business school in Norwich.
It sounds it is the regular everday use of swear words that people might say while still cranking out their work anyway that might be morale boosting among workers. It doesn't mean it would be helpful for managers to swear at employees. Obviously, the abusive "You're a ___" kind of swearing is as mean and unhelpful as it sounds.
Posted on October 16, 2007
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Study Finds High Absenteeism in U.S. Workplace
The Associated Press reports that a study conducted by Harris Interactive for the CCH has found that absenteeism in the U.S. are higher than they have been since 1999.
Skipping work without good reason? You have lots of company.
Unscheduled absenteeism at U.S. companies and organizations has climbed to its highest level since 1999, according to results of a recent nationwide survey of human resource executives in U.S. companies and organizations.
The survey, conducted for CCH by the Harris Interactive consulting firm, put the U.S. absenteeism rate at 2.5 percent in 2006, up from 2.3 percent a year ago and the highest since seven years ago when it was 2.7 percent.
It found that personal illness accounts for only 35 percent of unscheduled absences, with the rest due to family issues (24 percent), personal needs (18 percent), stress (12 percent) and entitlement mentality (11 percent).
It isn't just workers sneaking off for fun. The study found that companies with the worst morale also had higher rates of unscheduled absenteeism so there could be a job dissatisfaction element to the unscheduled absenteeism.
Posted on November 16, 2006
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Are Workers Wasting Time Reading Blogs?
Several blogs are discussing the AdAge.com article about workers wasting "551,000 years" of work time by reading blogs.
Blog this: U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs.
About 35 million workers -- one in four people in the labor force -- visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks -- blog readers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break.
As you can imagine the reaction from blogs about this article is not positive. Our BloggersBlog.com blog filed the article in the Blog Pessimism category.
Hopefully employers won't use this article as an excuse to try and deny workers access to blogs.
Posted on October 24, 2005
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Boredom Widespread in the Workplace
The Washington Post reports on boredom and the working world and finds that boredom is a frequent complaint of both employees and employers alike. The article cites several studies of boredom in the workplace including one from Gallup that found over 55% of U.S. employees are bored at work. Another study from Sirota Consulting LLC of 800,000 employees found that those with too little work to do were mored bored than those with too much.
Although workers may dream of days surfing the Internet with nothing to do, the busiest employees are the happiest, according to a survey by Sirota Consulting LLC. Of more than 800,000 employees at 61 organizations worldwide, those with "too little work" gave an overall job satisfaction rating of 49 out of 100, while those with "too much work" had a rating of 57.
"Those who are saying their workload is heavier rather than lighter are more positive," said Jeffrey M. Saltzman, chief executive of Sirota. "When you say you have too much work to do, other things are happening in your head: 'I'm valued by the organization. They're giving me responsibility.' That's better than being in the other place where you say I'm not of value in this place."
The article also includes some good points about how boredom can be a serious problem for someone working with dangerous equipment or on important security jobs.
Posted on August 19, 2005
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Wasting Time at the Office
Are you wasting valuable company time by surfing the web and chatting with co-workers? Probably. A recent study found that U.S. workers spend an average of two hours per day (excluding lunch) on activities like web surfing or socializing. The Career Journal offers some advice for employees wasting too much time at work and warns them their employers may be watching. And Missouri has the worst slackers of any U.S. state. USA Today reports that Missouri workers spend an average of 3 hours and 12 minutes a day of each work day wasting time.
Posted on August 12, 2005
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