The downside of downtime: The prevalence and work pacing consequences of idle time at work.

Abstract

The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters documented deadline effect, producing a deadtime effect, whereby workers slow down as a task progresses. Our analyses of work pace patterns provide evidence for a time discounting mechanism: workers discount idle time when it is relatively distant, but act to avoid it increasingly as it becomes more proximate. Finally, Study 4 demonstrates that the expectation of being able to engage in leisure activities during post-task free time (e.g., surfing the Internet) can mitigate the collateral work pace losses due to idle time. Through examination and discussion of the effects of idle time at work, we broaden theory on work pacing.

On the subjective experience and correlates of downtime at work: A mixed‐method examination

“…Interestingly, this result is similar to most findings in the work breaks literature that show relaxing or microbreak activities are most beneficial to employee well‐being (Kim et al, ; Strongman & Burt, ). It also is consistent with one recent paper that suggests being able to engage in leisure activities during downtime mitigates the negative effect of anticipating downtime (Brodsky & Amabile, ). Taken together, these findings perhaps imply that engaging in relaxation activities during downtime essentially makes downtime similar to formal work breaks and thus beneficial to individual well‐being.…”

“…As a finance assistant described, “Downtime is when I am done with my work and ask for more work and sometimes my boss or superior would forget to give it to me.” These contrasting quotes suggest that while the experience of downtime may be similar across different job types of jobs, the causes of it may vary. Obviously, other contextual factors (within job type) also will impact the amount of downtime one experiences such as supervisory behavior, and staff slack versus efficiency (see Brodsky & Amabile, ).…”

“…Finally, regarding the observed negative relationship between self‐reported performance and downtime, we see two possible (and complementary) explanations for the current findings most plausible. First, in some situations, individuals may stretch out their tasks (e.g., writing a report) when anticipating unwanted, prolonged periods with no tasks to complete after task completion (as implied by Brodsky & Amabile, ). These longer idle periods may be psychologically deleterious and could imply the employee's position is unnecessary (i.e., “being paid to do nothing”).…”

“…First, in some situations, individuals may stretch out their tasks (e.g., writing a report) when anticipating unwanted, prolonged periods with no tasks to complete after task completion (as implied by Brodsky & Amabile, 2018). These longer idle periods may be psychologically deleterious and could imply the employee's position is unnecessary (i.e.,…”

“…Certainly, those behaviors may occur during downtime (as during other work times), but downtime is not the manifestation or result of them. On this point, interestingly, Brodsky and Amabile () found that insofar as downtime does relate to job performance, its effect is to prolong the time to complete tasks in order to reduce the length of anticipated downtime. Second, and following from the distinction above, the initiator of these behaviors is the individual.…”