When daily planning improves employee performance: The importance of planning type, engagement, and interruptions.

Abstract

Does planning for a particular workday help employees perform better than on other days they fail to plan? We investigate this question by identifying 2 distinct types of daily work planning to explain why and when planning improves employees' daily performance. The first type is time management planning (TMP)-creating task lists, prioritizing tasks, and determining how and when to perform them. We propose that TMP enhances employees' performance by increasing their work engagement, but that these positive effects are weakened when employees face many interruptions in their day. The second type is contingent planning (CP) in which employees anticipate possible interruptions in their work and plan for them. We propose that CP helps employees stay engaged and perform well despite frequent interruptions. We investigate these hypotheses using a 2-week experience-sampling study. Our findings indicate that TMP's positive effects are conditioned upon the amount of interruptions, but CP has positive effects that are not influenced by the level of interruptions. Through this study, we help inform workers of the different planning methods they can use to increase their daily motivation and performance in dynamic work environments. (PsycINFO Database Record

Feeling exhausted or vigorous in anticipation of high workload? The role of worry and planning during the evening

“…Reattaching to one's work in the morning was associated with higher work engagement throughout the workday (Sonnentag & K€ uhnel, 2016). In line with our reasoning, planning interventions in which participants learn to make specific plans to reach goals increased well-being (MacLeod, Coates, & Hetherton, 2008) and planning techniques were associated with higher work engagement at the day level (Parke, Weinhardt, Brodsky, Tangirala, & DeVoe, 2017). Taken together, we expect that employees feel more vigorous in the morning on days when they planned their next workday during the evening:…”

“…We argue that on days when employees planned their next workday during the evening, they feel more vigorous in the next morning. In line with our reasoning, planning interventions in which participants learn to make specific plans to reach goals increased well-being (MacLeod, Coates, & Hetherton, 2008) and planning techniques were associated with higher work engagement at the day level (Parke, Weinhardt, Brodsky, Tangirala, & DeVoe, 2017). Having specific steps or goals, in turn, might energize employees before starting their workday.…”

When and how does anger during goal pursuit relate to goal achievement? The roles of persistence and action planning

“…Action regulation theory (Frese and Zapf 1994) states that human action is goal-oriented behavior that unfolds in a sequence: the action sequence starts with the generation of a goal and people then have to process and collect information about their environment, plan how to reach the goal, monitor the execution of action plans, and process feedback that may help them to attain their goal Frese and Zapf 1994;Zacher and Frese 2018). Accordingly, action plans are particularly important for converting goals into action Parke et al 2018). They are characterized as mental simulations of actions as they refer to individuals' cognitive representations about the sequence of steps necessary to achieve a goal (Frese and Zapf 1994;Gielnik et al 2014;Zacher and Frese 2018).…”

“…We build our idea on action regulation theory (Frese and Zapf 1994;Zacher and Frese 2018) and the perspective of planning functioning as forethought and prospection (Baumeister et al 2016;Lebel 2017;Lerner and Tiedens 2006). According to this perspective, planning builds on prospective thinking such that people use anticipated opportunities and happenings as a guide for current behavior (Baumeister et al 2016;Parke et al 2018). We argue that action planning functions as a guide for people and may aid them in keeping their attention and motivation focused on on-task behaviors and not getting distracted by their feelings of anger.…”

“…Specifically, we argue for the importance of psychological action planning as a boundary condition (Frese and Keith 2015). We assume that the generation of action plans helps people to guide goaldirected behavior and activities Frese and Zapf 1994;Parke et al 2018;Zacher and Frese 2018) and to use the energy and approach motivation provided by anger to direct them towards a set goal. This, in turn increases the 1 3 likelihood of constructive goal-oriented behavior following anger.…”