Title
Unobtrusively Measuring Stress and Workload of Knowledge Workers
Author
Koldijk, S.J.
Neerincx, M.A.
Kraaij, W.
Publication year
2012
Abstract
Imagine a typical working day of a knowledge worker, i.e. someone who is predominantly concerned with interpreting and generating information. Bob gets into the office at 9, starts up his computer, takes a look at his mails and calendar and plans what things he has to do this day. Then he starts working on one of the important tasks that have to be completed this week. When an e-mail comes in, he quickly reads it. As it is not relevant to him, he continues his task. When a colleague drops by, Bob looks up and talks to him, which results in some more to-do’s for the day. As they are quite urgent, Bob decides to do them right away. After completion he switches back to his previous task and continues his working day. At 5 ‘o clock Bob notices that he has not completed all planned tasks yet and he feels somewhat stressed. He starts wondering where the time went and whether he should work overtime again to finish up. Bob and many other knowledge workers experience working days like this, with important tasks to complete, while interruptions cause task switches and unplanned things have to be handled. These people often experience stress building up, which in the worst case results in burn-out [1, 2]. To prevent this from happening, knowledge workers should become more aware of what makes them feel stressed and how they can handle or avoid that.
Subject
Work stress
Work load
Unobtrusive measurement
Knowledge workers
Behaviour change
Work and Employment
Healthy Living
Communication & Information ; Human
MNS - Media & Network Services ; PCS - Perceptual and Cognitive Systems
TS - Technical Sciences ; BSS - Behavioural and Societal Sciences
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:00015b61-8ab7-4a7e-81d8-e235a503ef0d
TNO identifier
466503
Source
Proceedings of Measuring Behavior, 28-31 August 2012, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Document type
conference paper