Silent Hour
Amsterdam University
Communication Science (Graduate School of Commu-nication)
Place & date: Amsterdam, 31.01.2020 Name, initials: Gerlach, C.
ID number: 10614974
Study: Masters in Communication Sci-ence - Corporate
Course code:
Group number:
Writing tutor name: Van Zoonen, Ward
Writing assignment: Master Thesis Words: 10.042
Abstract
This case study investigated the impact of a policy implemented in an architect’s office to
facilitate work by reducing interruptions caused by modern communications technology and
thus increasing productivity. Interruptions are reduced by limiting access to communication
technology (phone and email) which is used to communicate with clients during specific time periods on a work day. We found that while some stated that the ‘silent hours’ helped them organize themselves and focus on their work tasks, this seemed to be more the exception than
the rule. More often than not, employees that were affected by the policy, reported it to
dis-rupt their workflow and making overall productivity harder to achieve. Furthermore,
employ-ees were affected differently based on their work roles and working preferences.
Shortcom-ings in communicating during implementation left employees confused about the purpose of
the policy. This led to a variety of interpretations which made organizational change difficult
and negatively affected employee sentiment towards the policy. Overall, we found that a lack
in fit between the policy and the daily routine of the employees might have led to a situation
in which the policy in its current form might make being productive harder to accomplish
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1. Introduction
Modern communication technology has changed the way we work. It has improved many
areas but it has also introduced new challenges. One issue that is often brought up in
connec-tion with modern communicaconnec-tion technology is the issue of interrupconnec-tions (Fonner & Roloff,
2012; Murphy, 2007; Renaud, Ramsay & Hair, 2006; Russel & Wilson, 2019; Wajcman &
Rose, 2011). Interruptions are an important topic because they can have a significant impact
on employee wellbeing by producing stress (Fonner & Roloff, 2012), and on productivity by
disrupting work (Rennecker and Godwin, 2003). Therefore, it is not surprising that
business-es attempt to utilize management actions to reduce interruptions of their employebusiness-es to try to
maximize desired business outcomes. While our knowledge regarding the effects of
interrup-tions caused by modern communication technology is growing, we have a limited
under-standing of actions like organizational interventions that may aid in successfully reducing
them. This is especially relevant as research often recommends various interventions to
coun-teract the detrimental effects of using modern communication technology (Kobayashi,
Fu-jimoto & Fujita, 2019; McMurtry, 2014).
Within the literature interruptions are widely discussed including a large number of
recent publications. Research shows that communications technology like email may cause
interruptions, which in turn can have a negative effect on employee wellbeing (Barley,
Mey-erson & Grodal, 2011; Hoeven, van Zoonen & Fonner, 2016; Jackson, Dawson, & Wilson,
2003; Kobayashi, Fujimoto & Fujita, 2019: Mark et. al, 2016; McMurtry, 2014; Renaud,
Ramsay & Hair, 2006). This effect seems to increase with the frequency of the interruptions
(Czerwinski, Johns & Iqbal, 2016). It has been shown that interruptions can be mediated by
agency, meaning if a worker decides to check their communication it produces fewer
nega-tive outcomes than if they are alerted to check their communication (Mark et. al, 2016).
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linked to beneficial business outcomes like productivity and creativity (Harter, Schmidt &
Hayes, 2002; Krekel, Ward & De Neve, 2019; Mark et. al, 2016; Renee Baptiste, 2008;
Rob-ertson, Jansen Birch & Cooper, 2012). It seems that for the same reason some researchers
have been advocating the introduction of policies regulating communication flow to prevent
interruptions and (email) overload (Kobayashi, Fujimoto & Fujita, 2019; McMurtry, 2014;
Renaud, Ramsay & Hair, 2006).
Wajcman and Rose however argue that while interruptions in the work place have
been studied, they have not yet been contextualized properly within modern communication
technology (2011). They found that indeed communication technology can lead to a work
environment that is characterized by short communication episodes that fit the definition of
interruptions but what they also found is that those can actually be perceived as beneficial
part of the work by the employees and not as a disruption of it (Wajcman & Rose, 2011).
This seems to be the case especially when the communication is addressing a current need of
the employee such as making information available that is necessary to continue the current
task (Russell, 2017). Research also points towards factors like personality having an impact
on determining if a communication episode – casu quo, ‘interruption’ – is beneficial or
harm-ful (Akbar et. Al, 2019; Russel & Woods 2020). For all those reasons the respective scholars
have advised against blanked policies that regulate workers email access as individual
differ-ence could mean that the same policy is beneficial for some and harmful for others (Russel &
Woods 2020).
Overall there seem to be two major directions. One that supports the idea that
inter-ruptions are distractions that are detrimental for productivity and wellbeing and thus need to
be managed. The other stipulates that interruptions are merely characteristics of
contempo-rary work in a world where modern communication technology like email is a functional and
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much more that short communication episodes that can be very beneficial, or even required,
for achieving personal and professional goals. The way we interpret this may depend a lot on
the type of work or task, the personality characteristics, features and functionality of the
tech-nologies involved. As many companies currently work with modern communication
technol-ogy, they will have to decide which interpretation of interruptions they subscribe to as it hap-pened in the case a German architect’s office.
The present study
This research presents a case study of an organizational intervention at the architect’s office directed at reducing communication technology related interruptions. Within the office
employees were often occupied with answering communications (e.g., phone calls or emails)
from external stakeholders such as clients, experts and government officials. Management
interpreted these communications as disruptions from the primary tasks, reducing employees’
attention to more pressing work goals. In addition, the communications were understood to
be disruptive in the sense of making longer periods of time spent on a specific task unlikely.
This was seen as reducing the depth and complexity of problem solving and interpreted as
being ultimately detrimental for productivity. This conceptualization of the situation is very
much in line with large amounts of the literature that see interruptions as reducing
productivi-ty and wellbeing (Barley, Meyerson & Grodal, 2011; ter Hoeven, van Zoonen & Fonner,
2016; Jackson, Dawson, & Wilson, 2003; Kobayashi, Fujimoto & Fujita, 2019: Mark et. al,
2016; McMurtry, 2014; Renaud, Ramsay & Hair, 2006). Not surprising, it led the manage-ment to take action and implemanage-ment a policy which they call the “Silent Hour”. The policy refers to a time period every day between 9:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. in which phone and email
communication is disabled. During this time period the employees can neither use their
sta-tionary phones nor receive or send emails. In cases of urgency they do have the option to ei-ther use the secretary’s office to relay emails between them and a recipient. They can also use
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the conference rooms to make calls. The aim of this policy is to reduce interruptions, increase
focused work time by facilitating in-depth creative work to ultimately increase productivity.
This policy to some degree resembles the kind of action that has been recommend in the
liter-ature to combat interruptions making this a relevant case to study (Kobayashi, Fujimoto &
Fujita, 2019; McMurtry, 2014; Renaud, Ramsay & Hair, 2006). One example of an
organiza-tion grappling with the issue of interruporganiza-tions at work is Atos. This French Tech Giant
an-nounced in 2011 that they would strive for a zero-email office. While some research was
done on this it resulted in little insight on the effectiveness of policies and the impact of
inter-ruptions, partly because the emails were replaced with an internal social medium which has
much of the same benefits and drawbacks as email when it comes to interruptions (Silic,
Back & Silic, 2015). Hence, examining a policy that regulates communication technology use
by restricting all access, may provide a more fine-grained understanding of what
organiza-tions can do to help employees stay focused and productive in an era of attention scarcity
(Doyle & Roda, 2019). Hence, this study is guided by the question: How do members of an
organization experience interruptions caused by modern communications technology as well
as the implementation of a policy that restricts access to modern communication technology
to reduce interruptions and increase productivity?
2. The theoretical framework
The policy was implemented to grapple with the negative implications of email and telephone
use (connectivity) at work, specifically with respect to its proclaimed relationship with stress
and productivity. In order to do so the policy targets two important underlying mechanisms of
those relationships, namely overload and interruptions
2.1 Interruptions as distractions
Scholars typically view interruptions as communication episodes that appear through
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Typically, those communication episodes are defined as events that divert a worker’s
atten-tion away from a task or processing sequence in order to engage with another activity
(Rus-sell, 2013). In addition, they are events that emerge outside of the workers control and are
caused by somebody outside of “that individuals cognitive world”, meaning that the person
being interrupted does not see it coming as they are not aware of it. (Russel, 2013).
One of the major outcomes connected to these kinds of interruptions is that they have
been widely found to reduce productivity (Renaud, Ramsay & Hair, 2006; Mark et. al, 2016;
Kobayashi, Fujimoto & Fujita, 2019). Interruptions can lead to task switching which
increas-es the workers mental work load and thus can lead to frustrations (Kobayashi, Fujimoto &
Fujita, 2019). Even if they do not lead to task switching, getting back into the task at hand
can take up to anything between 1 and 25 minutes, costing work time (Barley, Meyerson &
Grodal, 2011). This applies to being interrupted by a phone call as well as by email (Jackson,
Dawson, & Wilson, 2003). Interruptions have also been found to lead to stress (Akbar et., al,
2019) and exhaustion (ter Hoeven, et al., 2016). Interruptions in the health care sector were
conceptualized as being dangerous by increasing errors and reducing focus (Chisholm, et., al,
2001). In an attempt to reduce such negative implications, companies may provide resources
such as policies regulating connectivity (e.g., no-email Friday; Kobayashi, Fujimoto & Fujita,
2019; Mazmanian, 2013; Ter hoeven et al., 2016), also including policies such as the ‘silent hour’ as in our case study. Regulation of that kind were recommended by a management ex-pert who stated:
You simply cannot be accessible all of the time, in a busy office, when you have dead-lines to meet and projects that require your full concentration. (Kevan Hall)
(O'Connell, 2008).
2.2 Communications overload
However, it is not only the communication episodes that have been found to be
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mechanism the policy targets by limiting the access to communication technology. To
illus-trate the negative effects of communication overload, examples from the literature on email
are presented where overload has been extensively studied until this day (Barley, Meyerson
& Grodal, 2011; Czerwinski, Johns & Iqbal, 2016; Renaud, Ramsay & Hair, 2006; Stich,
Tarafda, Stacey & Cooper, 2018). When investigated, constantly monitoring email was found
to reduce productivity (Renaud, Ramsay & Hair, 2006). It was also found that the more time
is spent with email the lower is the perceived productivity and the higher is the stress
experi-enced (Czerwinski, Johns & Iqbal, 2016). Higher email load was found to lead to higher
stress (Stich, Tarafda, Stacey & Cooper, 2018). It was also observed that the more time
peo-ple spend handling email the more they feel overloaded not only that but peopeo-ple also got
dis-tracted from identifying other sources of overload (Barley, Meyerson & Grodal, 2011). The
prevailing negative outcomes for employees, feeling overburden and stressed, has led some
researchers to recommend reducing the quantity of emails delivered and managing email flow
(McMutry, 2014). This reflects the recommendations on providing resources to manage
inter-ruptions mentioned earlier.
2.3 Interruptions as work flow
Contrary to the prevalent view of interruptions as disruptions (Barley, Meyerson &
Grodal, 2011), recent research calls for a better conceptualization of interruptions in an era of
modern communication technology (Russell, 2013). One of the major arguments here is that
using modern communication technology, or being interrupted by them, is not the same for
everybody nor are its implications in the workplace. For instance, it was found that agency
moderates perceived productivity when dealing with email (Mark et. al, 2016). Employees
that decided to check their emails reported higher levels of productivity compared to those
that reacted to email notifications (Czerwinski, Johns & Iqbal, 2016). This illustrates that
checking emails can produce different outcomes, challenging findings mentioned earlier that
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It was found that Core Self-Evaluations predict email overload which shows that
per-sonality plays a role in predicting the outcome of email actions, as the Core Self-Evaluations
are a personality measurement (Reinke & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2014). It was shown that if
participants were bored and tired, engaging with email was observed to reenergize them,
es-pecially when they were found to be extrovert (Russel, 2013). This was explained by goal
behavior, people that were focused on their current task were annoyed by email interruption
while for example people that were focused on helping their coworker were satisfied by
pro-cessing mail (Russel, 2013). The same study also investigated strategies in handling and
found that work efficiency, personal wellbeing, control and concern for others were the most
popular positive goal reasons (Russel, 2013). The idea that individual email management
plays a role was further reinforced by findings that suggest that limiting access to email and
thus preventing workers from checking them led to negative outcomes due to a loss in control
(Russel, 2017). In addition, it was highlighted that normally most of the email sent is indeed
work critical and as such highly important for workers ability to do their job successfully
(Russel, 2017). It was also observed that action-goal relationships in dealing with work-email, could be predicted by people’s trait-relevant goal striving. This illustrates why “work-email actions can be both beneficial and problematic for people” (Russel & Woods, 2020). This does not only apply to email however.
It was also found that Interruptions in general can actually represent useful work
communication for knowledge professionals that do not interrupt but in fact enable the work
(Wajcman & Rose, 2011). The constant connectivity was observed to be intrinsic to
contem-porary knowledge work, it enabled updates on tasks as well as access to important
infor-mation when needed (Wajcman & Rose, 2011). It was found that not only excessive phone
use by so called hyper-connectors produces negative outcomes but also the opposite,
engage-9
ment often motivated by the fear of being constantly connected. This can lead to disinterest,
misinformation and unavailability illustrating that not only too much but also too little
con-nectivity can be harmful (MacCormick, Dery, Kolb 2012). It was also observed that
employ-ees preferred to manage their own connectivity, which benefited agency, rather than being
disconnected (Dery Kolb and MacCormick, 2014).
2.4 Implications for managing interruptions and overload.
The fact that interruptions can be both disruptive and beneficial means that managing employee’s connectivity requires an understanding of the particular function that communica-tion has in the context of its organizacommunica-tion. It has been argued that connectivity is akin to a
resource that needs to be managed (Kolb, Caza & Collings, 2012). It has to be understood
how much of that research is required to perform certain tasks and if other tasks might profit
from less of it because they require constant focus rather than coordination or
communica-tion. It also has to be understood how perceptions of agency and control are affected by
pos-sible regulations of communication technology. All this, with addition of the observation that
individual differences can also affect the outcomes of different amounts of connectivity,
points towards blanket rules probably being problematic as measure to regulate connectivity
as well that overregulating connectivity might have some negative outcomes.
3. Methods
3.1 Participants
We conducted interviews with 39 employees of Kister Scheithauer Groß, which employs
about 80 employees in total. The interviews were conducted in Cologne (G), the company’s main office and in Leipzig (G), the company’s secondary office. The participants were in-formed upfront via email of the study and its purpose. Participation was voluntary. The
inter-views were conducted during working hours, as such people were compensated for their time
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in Cologne the second round of interviews was conducted in Leipzig. We used a
semi-structured interview guide and iteratively applied some of the lessons learned in later
inter-views. We interviewed the higher management last so we could also discuss topics brought
up by the employees. Although there was some variation in position all employees were im-pacted by the “Silent Hour” policy. Our data includes all of the higher management, all of the secretary’s office, all of the PR department and architects from all positions. The gender dis-tribution is reflective of the disdis-tribution in the company which has a mostly female work
force. The interviews focused on the participants’ work realities, how they structure their
work, the implementation of the “silent hour” policy as well as their experience with it. In
addition, we supplemented the questions in our semi-structured interview guide with
ques-tions that probe at the issues that the semi-structured protocols raised. Those were mostly
concerned with topics like employee management and hierarchical structures. Some positions
for instance in the competition department, the internal architects, and some of the project
members who worked on tasks that required little communication were only affected to a
small degree by the policy. Team leads and project members who did have coordination heavy tasks were affected more strongly. The owners, the CEO, the CFO and the secretary’s office were excluded from having to adhere to the policy but they were still affected. Either
through having to manage the policy and its implementation or by gaining new roles like the
secretaries who gained a gate keeping function.
3.2 Materials
We began our interviews by inquiring about the informant’s role, their tasks, their workflow and their reflections on their average day. We quickly discovered that due to the nature of
project work in architecture, most interviewees did not have something akin to an average
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they were working on. This meant we had to conceptualise work flow in a more dynamic matter and had to focus more on peoples’ perceptions rather than their daily work structure. This means we were not able to compare how the participants structured their work before
the policy compared to after. For example, if they changed the times for working on specific
tasks or coordinating with colleagues, resulting in a more or less fluid work experience.
In-stead we had to focus on how people perceived their new work realities. Did they feel more
or less stressed, were they under the impression that the new time period in which they were
not able to access their communications easily helped them in being productive or not. Those initial questions were followed by asking about their experience with the “Silent Hour” poli-cy. The policy was discussed in as much detail as possible. Perception of the policy, its
pur-pose, its effects, perceived benefits and problems were inquired about.
Specific questions ranged from “Can you recount how the policy was implemented?” to “Does the policy facilitate your work or hinder it?”. As it became clear that participants used work arounds to counter the policy, we started to explicitly inquire about those.
Similar-ly, once we started to notice that participants stated that the issues the policy tried to tackle
were not high on their priority list we made sure to follow up on that in later interviews.
An-other focal point became the way the owner introduced the policy and conducted himself in
regards to it. Overall, we gained a rich data set that included a large amount of opinions about
the policy, deep insights into the organisational structure and logic as well a plethora of
anec-dotes.
The interviews lasted usually between 30 to 50 minutes. In Cologne the interviews were conducted in the owner’s office, in Leipzig in one of the conference rooms. Opinions and observations started to repeat after approximately the first ten interviews but due to
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3.3 Setting
The architect’s office that was investigated is what is commonly referred to in this industry as an author’s office. These are usually led by a single architect or a small number of architects, they have a strong artistic signature and are considered prestigious. Their purpose is to
trans-late the designs of the leading architect or architects. Architecture is a profession that
under-stands itself as creative and artistic (Ahuja, Nikolova & Clegg, 2017). As a result,
architec-ture is often understood as a lifestyle.
Because some of the professors and also the colleagues had this idea: we are now architects and that is a lifestyle. (Architect, 21)
The idea is that architects have a sense for beauty, design, and creativity. In reality,
however, only a small number of architects will be able to achieve a creative position in the
work life which stands at odds with a strong focus on design and creative work within the
studies at university.
Being an architect is 20% designing and the rest is just coordination. (Technical lead, 19)
In fact, out of the nine phases of production that an architect’s work is comprised of, only phase two offers the possibility to express one’s artistic creativity. Most of the phases are concerned with managing, planning, overseeing construction and the completion of the
building.
The company that was investigated is represented by three authors. However, one of
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owner. In his position he commands a high degree of authority and determines the strategy of
the organisation. Hierarchically, the upper management operates as an extension of the owner
directly below him in the organizational structure. It consists of a CEO and a CFO. Beneath
those two are the two office leads, one for Cologne and one for Leipzig. The office leads are
not part of the upper management. The office leads main role is to take care of some tasks
that would commonly be taken care of by human resources. For example, conducting
inter-views with applicants and having feedback meetings with employees. It is important to note
that the office leads are architects primarily and office leads secondarily. As a result, they
spend the majority of their time with architectural tasks and a minority with employee
man-agement. Below them are the senior architects which could be described as line managers, all
of which are project leads but have a higher standing in the company meaning higher pay as
well as the opportunity to exercise some influence over the owner, mostly in form of council.
Below them are the rest of the project leads. A project lead can be by themselves or have up
to five project members in their team. Most projects are conducted by teams of two to three
people. Below the project leads are all the architects that are not in a leading role. The secre-tary’s office has three employees, one of them solely responsible for the owner. In the end all departments and hierarchical levels were represented in the interview data.
3.4 Policy in detail
The silent hour policy was originally introduced by the owner to prevent interruptions of
emails and phone calls from disrupting the workflow and reducing the quality and quantity of
work. The policy was introduced through an email written to the external business partners of
the office outlining the problems associated with interruptions, explicitly mentioning the
neg-ative impact on creneg-ative planning and problem-solving. Hence, according to the email, this is
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formalized in any kind of policy document. This introduction of the “Silent Hour” was in fact not the first time the owner tried to push for a regulation of that kind. It had been
implement-ed a couple of years earlier but was discardimplement-ed again as it was found that the employees were
not adhering to it.
We have this Intranet and there were the first newspaper articles that the owner had put in the intranet, eh, because of the silent hour, yes, and then we had a first try which then went wrong because people did not adhere to it really. (Senior Architect 1)
This is also likely the reason why the second time the implementation was supported
by technological measures – i.e., blocking email access and disconnecting phones – to
en-force the policy, which was not done the first time. When the policy was introduced the
sec-ond time, which is the case this study investigates, it spanned the time from midnight to
mid-day. It was also introduced with a three-month trial period after which it continued on. As
such for a total of twelve hours phone calls and email were not accessible for the employees.
Those restrictions however do not apply to the upper management and the owners. There are
ways for the employees to officially circumvent those regulations. In cases of urgency em-ployees were able to request the secretary’s office to send emails for them. They are able to call for the employees or connect incoming calls to them. In addition, employees can use the
conference rooms to make calls by themselves. At the time of the interviews the policy had
been in effect for 10 months.
3.5 Analysis
Taking a grounded theory approach (Charmaz 2007, Strauss and Corbin 1998), we conducted
an iterative textual analysis of the interview transcripts in an attempt to understand the
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customs. Ultimately, we are interested in work experiences (including interruptions and work
flow) and sensemaking surrounding the “silent hour” policy. We iterated on readings and
coding of the interview transcripts. Coding moved from marking comments and observations
in the interviews that appeared notable to determining and improving analytic categories. We
read each of the interview transcripts repeatedly and grouped quotes along main themes. We
then discussed these themes and created notes about the associated mechanisms and tensions
that we observed in the data (e.g., the experience of interruptions as bothersome or not, the
implementation of a policy that was not based on requests from employees). These notes en-abled us to develop key categories (such as “perceptions of autonomy” or “short communica-tion episodes as essential part of project work”). We then revisited and improved the codes within categories. Observing contradictions in the justification for the policy and the work
life of the participants led us to pay more attention to how people made sense of the policy in
the context of their communications. What emerged from this approach were insights into
how the hierarchical structures of the organization together with the ideas about the role of an architect’s work and task boundaries had led to the implementation of this policy and associ-ated performative struggles employees experienced.
4. Results
4.1 Implementation
The organizational environment we studied was not used to regular sweeping changes in re-gards to work organization. Therefore, introducing a policy with such an impact on peoples’ work life was a distinct event. It also means that the participants were not used to changes of
this magnitude as a regular occurrence. As such they were surprised and somewhat unsettled when they learned the news. This was also due to the fact that the policy didn’t tackle an is-sue that was widely perceived to be of priority.
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Exactly, that was now, as far as I know but this is only my impression, ahm, I heard from nobody that somehow somebody from here, I will come out and say it was not forced by the employees, but that it came rather from the owner. (Architect 3)
Some of the surprise about the implementation was due to the fact that most had no
idea it was going to happen. Some of the employees were aware of the earlier attempt to
in-troduce the policy but that did not mean they knew what to expect, or when to expect it.
The owner did bring up the topic repeatedly. And then he determined it and I was still expect-ing to be excluded from it. (laughexpect-ing) And then to start it off I was pissed off for the first two, three days once I realized I really cannot make calls and I really do not get emails send to me. (Senior Architect 1)
So not only were participants not adequately prepared to receive the policy, not even
the senior architects were aware of what the policy was going to mean for them. Clearly
ex-pectations were not managed properly. This led to some frustrations. Suddenly not being able
to answer communications was upsetting, hinting that those communications were functional
and that engaging in them was likely motivated by goal striving. It was not only that
partici-pants felt that they were not prepared but they were simply not aware of the topic at all, to
them it felt like it came out of nowhere. There was no ramp up, nor were people involved in
the decision-making process as reflected upon by both architects and upper-management as
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There was no possibility to just try it out, it was just there all of a sudden. I don’t even know how often people would pick up the phone in the beginning and then were like: Shit! Or an email was sent and then: Oh damn! […] You couldn’t just slide into it; it was just there. (Senior architect 2)
So, the participants felt like they had no agency in the development, implementation,
or enforcement of the policy, making most reluctant to support the policy. When change is
introduced in organizations people usually need to be convinced to adopt it as changing habit
is often an exhausting and sometimes also painful endeavor. In this case, a lack of agency
made it hard for people to feel invested. This was coupled with a lack of justification. Nearly
all participants interpreted the reasoning behind implementation to be that it happened
cause the owner felt it was a good idea. All in all the introduction of the policy fell short
be-cause it failed to give the workers reason to why they should be positively excited for the
change and that the effort they had to put in to make it work would actually end up
benefit-ting them as illustrated by this quote by the CEO.
Absolutely! (In answering the question if it should have been communicated better to the em-ployees) It was, you could say, decided per ‘Decree Mufti’, to do this silent hour. […] It would have been better if you would have allowed communication, that is not necessarily the strength of an owner led office if you have to keep so many people crapping. […] for the em-ployee communications, for the atmosphere it would have been better in any case if you would have communicated it cleanly and so decisions in a community based on the principle of mutual solidarity are just more widely supported. (CEO)
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Employees that had been in the company for a longer time felt that their status was
being under attack as a result of their autonomy being infringed upon.
So, we also had a meeting here where I did tell the owner myself: „so I am 47 years old, I am not raising him and I especially won’t let him raise me “. And I did also let him know that if I am of the opinion that I need to make call, then I will use my cell phone (laughing). (Senior Architect 1)
And it caused some strong emotions.
There are indeed days where I want to strangle the entire management for this fucking idea. (Senior architect 1)
A worker that joined the company recently describes how the policy was introduced
to them. It illustrates how an unsuccessful implementation leads to a status quo in which a
given regulation is perceived negatively. When the participants were introduced to the policy
it was a negative experience. Therefore, when they have to introduce it to a new employee
themselves, they present it as negative. As a result, even though the new employee did not
experience the implementation themselves they are being socialized into the company in such
a way as to have a similar experience when learning about the policy. This will likely
pro-duce the same kind of response as the one the other colleagues had to the initial
implementa-tion solidifying the status quo.
So, as they told me, so when they explained it to me, they said: Yes, so we have here this si-lent hour, it was introduced a while ago, many people find it God-awful (Architect 7).
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4.2 Interpreting interruptions as disruptions
Interruption can be detrimental for productivity. They can cause task switching, leading to an
increased mental workload which ultimately leads to frustration (Kobayashi, Fujimoto &
Fu-jita, 2019). Even when after dealing with the email the original task is resumed it takes time
until the worker is fully back on working on it which can lead to significant amounts time lost
(Kobayashi, Fujimoto & Fujita, 2019). In addition, if a worker has organized their day,
mul-tiple interruptions can lead to the organization of the day to fall apart. All of which impacts
efficiency and productivity. Having to refocus and spent additional time can also lead to an
increase in stress (Barley, Meyerson & Grodal, 2011). For all these reasons interruptions can
be quite counterproductive. We found that participants did experience disruptions of their
work flow caused by communication like this architect who shared his experiences with
dis-ruptions.
Definitely, I did an enormous amount of calling […] It was quite often the case that you, there I often told people on the phone: wait I just quickly need to finish drawing this polygon otherwise, if I press abort now then ten minutes of work are gone, like that, ahm, yes every time when you take a call and especially when there were multiple projects and you then if you worked on a totally different project, then somehow you are completely thrown off and, ah, that does take longer then. (Architect 6)
The fact that drawing is not a process that can be paused at a whim illustrates that
re-ceiving communications while drawing can be disruptive. It interrupts the drawing process
and might even set you back, as a result productivity is compromised. The literature discusses
how interrupting any task can lead to recovery periods up to 25 minutes which in this case is
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these type of seem to be typical of the kind you have to deal with doing project-work as an
architect, some of the participants appreciated the reduction of those due to the policy.
I think it is now certainly more pleasant before noon when you know now really nothing is going to come in, then you can really take your time, you get rid of your stuff and you aren’t being disturbed. (Project lead 4)
A reason for disruptions being not unusual is that the work of architects in this
organi-zation is very much defined by the clients. They are a legitimate source of interruptions espe-cially since they satisfy one of the core aspects of interruptions, they “are caused by some-body outside of that individuals cognitive world” (Russel, 2013). This makes disruption even more likely as the client is mostly not aware of the work flow of the architect at the point in
time of the interruption increasing the likelihood of it being disruptive. The clients tend to
reach out to the architects often and they expect them to be highly responsive and they have
the following attitude.
Ok I will call the architect and they dance immediately. (CEO)
This illustrated that the clients seem to feel entitled to interrupt the architects as well as
de-mand task-switching which has been established as being counterproductive (Kobayashi,
Fujimoto & Fujita, 2019). All in all, the participants were well familiar with interruptions
caused by calls and emails or clients demanding their immediate attention.
4.3 Policy as work structure
Participants, when asked how the policy changed the structure of their work day, often
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also mentioned that they used the time to prepare communications by bundling information
or prewriting email. They mentioned that havening a given amount of time which was
sup-posed to be used for focused work benefited those tasks. This is illustrated by the following
quote.
I prewrite emails before noon, so I prepare them, partly that is writing, partly that is also adding plans, then I already pre draw those, I write the emails and then I have it bundled. (Architect, 4)
This was expanded upon by architects in leading positions. While they also shared
that they used the time to prepare, some argued that it was especially valuable for more
sensi-tive tasks. This seems sensible as interruption can disrupt focus and increase errors (Akbar et.
Al, 2019). Therefore, the policy provides what can be seen as a save zone for tasks that
re-quired a high amount of focus or would suffer especially from making errors such as writing
bills.
So, in general is it that I just, as a project lead I don’t only plan but I also do costs and also schedules and such so then I just really have two and a half hours or more time or just quiet time where nobody bothers me. (Senior architect 1)
It was mentioned by the participants that felt they profit from the policy that extended
periods of time without interruption are valuable. This seems was also the case for the CEO
who even though they do not have to adhere to the silent hour officially try to take advantage
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I use the silent hour for myself that for a change I can be happy that for two and a half hours […]close my door for two and a half hours and then work as concentrated as possible with-out somebody coming in every five minutes and says they need this or I want this or I lacking this, give me a hug, like this. (CEO)
Having a longer stretch of time without interruptions was also reported to be a
pleas-ant experience. Most of the architects in this office work in a large open office. As such there
often is a background of noise and activity. This combined with the demanding nature of the
job, the fact that workers have to coordinate themselves as the work flow changes throughout
the different project phases as well as managing their teams. In addition, they have to adhere
to their clients who can be demanding at times. As a result, participants voiced themselves in
appreciation of the those stretches of calm.
Ahm, in that sense something did in fact change because I get much less calls before noon which is incredibly pleasant because then you at least somehow have these two and a half hours. (Senior architect 8)
However, most of the participants stated that overall not much had changed for them.
Most stated that the phase of the project they were in and what current tasks they worked had
much more of an impact on the structure of their work day. For participants that did not
communicate much with experts or clients their day remained reasonably unaffected.
4.4 Interruptions as work structure
When talking to the employees it became clear that many of them did experience short
epi-sodes of communication, that could typically be seen as interruptions, not as being disruptive
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communication with experts and clients is a functional and large part of their work. In many
phases of a project the assistance of experts is critical and so being able to reach them
any-time is essential. This strengthens the assumption that most communication episodes are
functional, also none of the participants complained about unnecessary communications
fur-ther reinforcing this observation (Russell, 2017). Being able to reach out based on your own
discretion is also an important factor providing you with agency (Mark et. al, 2016) and
ena-bling you to engage in goal-striving behavior facilitating your wellbeing (Russell, 2013).
Therefore, if participants were working on a task being able to communicate was important to
be productive. The following quote illustrates this.
I formed a work habit that I solve problem immediately and don’t collect problems, but solve them at once, that means as soon as something pops up I reach for the phone. (Technical lead, 19)
Another relevant factor was that participants felt that communication was an essential
part of their job. Drawing and creating designs is for most architects a small part of their
work. Therefore, it seems counterintuitive to create a policy to facilitate those tasks,
especial-ly if it means compromising the communication which seems to be the major part as
illustrat-ed by this quote.
It (the policy) limits you in your work because as architect the designing is 20% of your work and the rest is just coordination work primarily and for that you have to be able to communi-cate and if you cannot do that, I found that incredibly frustrating when you arrive here and I have to do this with that guy and that with this guy and then I can’t […] I am close to saying you can’t work like that. (Technical lead, 19)
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This even extended to the CEO. Their job requires a lot of coordination and
commu-nication, especially with clients who are often not the most patient, especially if they have an
urgent request. As the CEO declared they were in favor of the policy while at the same time
holding a position with high communicative demand. In answering a follow up question to
their earlier statement in regards to trying to claim the silent hour for themselves they had the
following to say.
So that changed internally and externally has changed that ahm, I of course work exactly as I did before, I can’t and don’t have to adhere to the silent hour because my tasks are just dif-ferent. (CEO)
This illustrates how even if somebody like the idea of the policy, it seems that the jobs
in question are hard to harmonize with it. The tasks of the CEO are not too different from the
ones of senior architects or project leads. The implementation of the policy declared that it
should help improve creative processes like drawing which are supposed to profit form long-er plong-eriods of commitment. The slogan attached to that was “One detail a day”. The problem with this approach was that the everyday work life of most of the participants especially the
senior architects and project leads look a little bit different as declared in this quote.
You are a project lead doing executive work in a big project, what do you do the entire day? That’s correspondence! That is just allocating work and receiving calls and telling people here from then till then and here just collecting information permanently, and in reality, it’s not like that the project lead really draws themselves still and that they have to think about designs. (Architect 3)
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As such it seems hard for workers in those positions to make positive use of the police
on a large scale. The demands on communication only increase in time of urgency. There it
seems that the ability to reach out to parties that hold the necessary information is valued. It
can also be assumed that in a more intense phase the goal-striving is task oriented which would predict that communicating as soon as the need arises helps to fulfil one’s goal-striving producing beneficial outcomes for wellbeing (Russel, 2013). This is illustrated in the quote
below.
Then it is just like this if we are in stressful phases where we need an answer urgently of somebody and have to urgently call somebody and need some emails to arrive and we need to have plans from the landscape architect, there every hour counts. (architect 3)
All in all, most participants saw communication as a functional and essential part of
their work. Being able to communicate when found necessary facilitates goal-striving and
agency which in turn help with wellbeing and productivity. Those effects were even more
present in times of intense work.
4.5 Policy as disruption
As participants saw their communications as functional and essential part of work it was not
surprising to find that the policy was perceived by the vast majority of them as a hindrance.
Many of them expressed frustrations with not being able to freely access their
communica-tions at a time of their choosing. They felt that especially during more intense times the
poli-cy became a liability. Those usually took place before a project had to be handed in or hit a
certain milestone. In those times communication often became numerous and frantic. Often it
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being finished it needs to be made sure that all the critical parts, for example air circulation,
electrics and water flow are approved by the respective experts. Having to deal with a period
of time in which communication was hardly possible and made it that much more difficult. In
an already stressful time this can increase stress and negatively impact wellbeing as the
fol-lowing quote illustrates.
Actually especially if you have a delivery you know (delivery is used to describe a deadline for a project phase), I had that last year, there we had such an incredible amount of stress in a project, a short schedule and our project lead was sick for a longer time and my colleague and I are not that experienced yet and we had to fight through it, we had another colleague but she had never done executive planning until the finish, we fought through it somehow, of course we gave our best, then that (referring to the policy) made even more stressful because you thought the entire time: I can’t reach the people, like that, so you stayed longer some-times during the evenings so you made more over hours to just write one more email because you thought if I send it tomorrow it is too late and that caused me more stress then in that phase that was actually really shit, and it really impacted us during that time. (Architect 11)
What is also illustrated in the quote above is how the lack of agency makes the worker feel helpless. This is contrasted to the worker “fighting” and “giving it their best” showing that the effect of the policy is opposite of the workers efforts and needs, clearly hindering
goal-striving and thus reducing wellbeing which is expressed by the worker communicating
an increase in stress (Russell, 2013). In addition, the workers agency is reduced which is
cru-cial as it is a strong predictor for wellbeing and productivity (Mark et. al, 2016).
It was also a description that was reoccurring, that participants felt helpless in face of
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do anything about that. Another source of frustration with the policy concerned the batching
of communication that resulted as consequence of the restrictions caused by the policy. While
some participants stated that they enjoyed going through all the email at once at least the
same number stated that it was disheartening for them to suddenly be frustrated by a large
pile of email. How grating that can be was voiced by a project lead in this quote.
If you get everything at once and additionally everything comes in deranged so not logically but as a mess then you get, Bam!, all the mail and then you read something and it says some-thing about a decision and then you think: where does the decision come from. Down there is the original mail, that was extremely annoying I have to say and unproductive because then you have the effort of reading everything and to consider what are the priorities to then an-swer one after the other or to react. […] but it will really happen that you have a new project and that you get into the phase as said or you have to coordinate with three planning engi-neers, then you get 567 emails at once and if you get those at once than it is for me at least somehow more exhausting then if you get those successively, you just read one, okay, okay, that is okay, then the next one comes in and I can react (Project lead 10)
The policy impacted the work rhythm of the participants significantly. Participants that were used to deal with communications as they came in couldn’t anymore. When partici-pants preferred to communicate in the morning, they were not able anymore. Participartici-pants that
did not like when communications bunched up had to live with it now. These are strong
nega-tives especially in the light that it was observed that differences in personality affect personal
preferences. It was shown that for some workers dealing with email as soon as they received it was beneficial. To be able to go along with once’s preferences increases wellbeing while
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not reducing it (Russell, 2013). The need to go against one’s preferences, to have to restruc-ture oneself led to uncomfortableness and in some instances to an increase in stress.
After 11:30 then you had to make 34 calls and then you have to organize yourself, it is up to you to set priorities and that creates added work or more stress for me at least, I don’t think it is necessarily sever but sometimes it can be severe. (Project lead 10)
There was the option to communicate during the silent hour with help of the secre-tary’s office or by going into a conference room, if one was available. The issues with using the secretary’s office were the following. In Cologne there is only one secretary while there are fifty employees, this secretary also has a host of other tasks and while connecting a phone
call is reasonably easy, in case of email the secretary had to receive the email from the
work-er, send it to the recipient, receive the email from the recipient and send it to the worker. For
those reasons most participants did not feel very comfortable with this alternative as shown in
this quote.
So, I then just bother the secretary, right, so they then have to connect me or I send an email to the secretaries that she has to forward, that is somewhat doable but it is also stupid that that is just quite a bit more work her them. (Architect 3)
The use of conference rooms as way to be able to make a call was mentioned as
prob-lematic by the majority of the participants. The fact that architects often work with large
plans made it difficult to have effective phone conversations without access to your desktop.
The people that felt they had to use this alternative were often frustrated that instead of using
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large amounts of documents. This also irritated other employees as they witnessed this and it
seemed rather questionable to them as well. Also, multiple participants brought up the
envi-ronmental concerns connected to printing large amount of paper for a single occasion.
But sometimes it happens that you have to solve something immediately or you have to react you can’t do anything so you have to come here (referring to the office we were doing the interview in) or to the conference room to make a call and then you can’t see you own screen then you have to print all documents first, you have remember the phone number and what the topic was, if you need some plan then you will also have to print some environment un-friendly paper also just for the time of this phone call to resolve something. Therefore, look-ing at it from this angle I would say it was exhaustlook-ing for me multiple times. (Project lead 10)
All this meant that when architects needed some information urgently the presence of
the policy could prevent or at least complicate acquiring that information. Interestingly, this
led to some fascinating outcomes in regards to interruptions. Multiple participants exclaimed
that when they were working on a task during the duration of the policy and realized that they
needed information only available through correspondence they often ended up abandoning
the task for now. Or in other words the policy interrupted their work. Similar to interruptions
caused by communication episodes this interruption led to task-switching (Akbar et. Al,
2019). This in turn is known to reduce productivity by requiring recovery time, increases
er-ror rate and lowers focus. As a result, the policy that was supposed to prevent exactly those
kinds of outcomes led to them itself. Only this time it was a 2,5-hour interruption. All this is
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Because when something came to my mind I couldn’t immediately complete the topic, so I couldn’t, I just started a topic and you think you would just like to coordinate that with some-body and then you think oh right, that doesn’t work, I still have to wait until 11:30, so you start something different and then at 11:30 or later you have to again get into the other topic, you see; because sometimes it is really complicated if you calculated a bit more or so; there you have to reengage yourself with it; so you can recall it. (Architect 11)
Overall, annoyance and frustration dominated the discussion of the policy in most of
the interviews. Participants failed to understand how the policy was supposed to help them. A
large number made clear that they thought it was a due to a craze od the owner that the policy
was implemented not because it was something they needed. As such most of the participant
hoped for the policy to disperse eventually.
5. Discussion
5.1 Most important findings
Our investigation of interruptions has articulated the complexity that the usage of modern
communication technology entails. First, interruptions are indeed perceived as distractions,
but also as useful resource to actually maintain desired productivity levels. Second, the ‘blan-ket’ policy implemented to reduce interruptions caused by email and phone calls, may ironi-cally create interruptions as people do not have access to relevant information. Third, the
ways in which interruptions and polices are interpreted depends on the role
(sen-ior/management), job tasks (project manager, developer, stage 1 or 2 of a project), and
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5.2 Theoretical implications
Some of the negative effects that that emerged in the literature such as task-switching,
ex-haustion, and reduced productivity (Renaud, Ramsay & Hair, 2006; Hoeven, van Zoonen &
Fonner, 2016; Mark et. al, 2016; Kobayashi, Fujimoto & Fujita, 2019), were also reflected in
the interviews. Participants reported interruptions to be disruptive. Specifically, they
men-tioned that interruptions made it hard for them to stick to a task, that their focus was reduced
and that it often meant switching from one task to another ultimately costing time and
reduc-ing productivity (Kobayashi, Fujimoto & Fujita, 2019).
However, the findings did provide evidence that communication episodes are
per-ceived as functional part of contemporary work (Wajcman & Rose, 2011). For instance,
in-terviewees reported that these interruptions helped them to work efficiently as it enabled
them to keep working on tasks when they required information from the outside, a common
occurrence in their line of work (Russel, 2017). This is an example of the participants goal
striving, wanting to complete the task, is facilitate by a short communication episode, a phone
call or an email (Russell, 2013).
Our study illustrated why blanket rules can be problematic. While some participants
appreciated the policy because it helped them structure themselves and prevent disruptions
other participants were frustrated and annoyed that their access to communication technology
was restricted. Again, goal striving seems to be an adequate explanation (Russell, 2013). The
people that were annoyed were usually foremost concerned with fulfilling their tasks while
participants that enjoyed the policy felt that it was an opportunity to self-developed by trying
out something new and by having to discipline oneself. The fact that also the participants
enjoying the policy did report using work arounds regularly however points in the direction
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Not being able to communicate in the desired way prompted many of our participants
to wonder if they even can do their work in those circumstances. This indicates that having
no connectivity can be as bad as having too much connectivity supporting the model of
hypo-connectors (MacCormick, Dery, Kolb 2012). Interestingly, the problems participants reported
in regards to not enough connectivity was very similar to the problems that come from too
much connectivity. For example task switching occurred when participants could not
contin-ue on their given tasks because they could not communicate, causing a recovery period and a
loss of focus (Kobayashi, Fujimoto & Fujita, 2019). This points towards models like the
con-nectivity as a resource model (Kolb, Caza & Collings) where as it seems that if there is too
much or too little of the resource, work will be interrupted. This would be a good assumption
to test, especially because the literature on the disruptive effects of interruptions could further
applied here.
When wondering how to achieve the right level of connectivity our interviews suggest
that the fact that employees are active actors (Grant & Ashforth, 2008) who can shape their
work environments when needed should not be underestimated. Several interviewees
men-tioned that when their level of connectivity got too high or their current task required a low
level of connectivity, they would disconnect themselves. They achieved this by either asking
colleagues to take calls for them, tell people they are in a meeting or they simply unplugged
their phones and disabled their email alerts. Similar to how they used work arounds when
their connectivity was lowered by the policy and they felt they needed it at a higher level.
Therefore, maybe instead of trying to manage connectivity, employees should be empowered
to manage their own. As Individual differences, work context, project phases and task variety
might demand different levels of connectivity the choice of when to pick up should maybe be
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5.3 Practical implications
The main advice for organizations that are looking for ways to manage employees’
work-flows in technology intensive environments is to ensure that they have a good understanding
of how and why their staff uses the technology. In this case it was observed that the policy
that was implemented was based on a lack of understanding. The policies goal was to create
periods of time without communication to focus on uncommunicative tasks like drawing. In
contrast, the work of most participants was centered around communicative tasks. Most
par-ticipants had to primarily coordinate, organize and manage. As a result of that the policy
made being productive harder for most participants which in turn produced frustration and
stress.
When considering how to prevent an outcome like this there are a few points to
con-sider. Those are communication, agency and leadership style. The last one can be tackled in
the most concise way. Declaring that from one day to the next the way people work has to
change with no tangible way to react or interact with this order is in most cases an outdated
leadership style. Many participants reported that they believed being simply told what to do
felt outdated, they expected a more interactive leadership style and referenced companies in
their surroundings that had a more modern style that was clearly preferred. This reality is
reflected in the literature which informs us that employees are not simply passive actors in
their work environments, rather they take charge of these environments and influence, alter,
and shape these if needed. As such employees should also be treated like active actors, they
be involved. Otherwise they will likely undermine the change as was observed in this case by
many participants mentioning the use of workarounds to circumvent their restrictions in
re-gards to access to communications technology.
Treating employees as active actors also touches on the next point which is
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would have been easily discovered if the management would have inquired. Our interviews
showed us that participants were eager to share their views on the organizations, its
short-comings in their eyes as well as its strength. Many participants event explicitly expressed
their thanks after the interviews emphasizing that it had been a therapeutic experience for
them. This strongly positive reaction was also partly the reason why we were able to get the
number of participants that we got. At the same time, it illustrates that communication within
the organization was underdeveloped. Most participants expressed that there was no person
or place in the company that was truly interested in their opinions, as such many concerns
and ideas were not shared. As result we urge any organization to ensure that their members
have places and people to go to, to share their thoughts. Building on this discovery we
in-quired how participants felt about having an entity in the organization that regularly
com-municates to them, collecting feedback but also explaining management changes to them.
The reception to this idea was overwhelmingly positive.
This leads to the next point, agency. The fact that the policy was conceptualized and
implemented by the owner without anybody else having a say is likely a big reason for the
complications that followed. As employees are active actors, they should experience agency
and efficacy, not only because both of those are strongly related to a host of beneficial
out-comes, but also to just be able to fulfil their role as employees. A way to give employees
ac-cess to these important states would be to implement the entity mentioned before. Participants
both described either having an individual or a group of representatives that was tightly
con-nected to the employees and as such being well informed about their needs and views. This
entity should have some authority to represent the employees, satisfying the needs for agency
and efficacy. In our case an entity like that could have met the urge of the owner to
imple-ment the policy in question and would have been able to help develop a policy that would
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5.4 Limitations and future research
As with any study relying on self-reports, the usual biases such as social desirability may
exist. Participants are likely to wanted to portray themselves in a beneficial light. This was
also felt in conducting the interviews were participants did often emphasize why there
rea-soning was reasonable. People in the office were aware when others went to conduct the
in-terview as inin-terviews were conducted in a room which did provide privacy during the
inter-views but did not obfuscate the identity of the interviewee. It might have meant as well that
participants discussed the content of the interview with each other before taking he interview
themselves. Regardless it was found that opinions varied across cases. This was somewhat
alleviated as nearly half the staff was interviewed. This of course also illustrated the
limita-tion that the other half was not interviewed as such the findings are only a representalimita-tion of
the half that was interviewed. The sampling was voluntary and as such might represent a
cer-tain demographic of participants willing to share. As a wide variety of opinions was observed
as well as all major positions covered it can be assumed that the overall impression does
rep-resent the opinions held at the company in questions. The owner was not available for an
in-terview reducing the insights gained into the creation of the policy. Furthermore, quite a few
of the topics should be applicable to other organizations with similar structures. Something a
lot of the participants hinted at when they brought up other work experiences they had.
Future research should investigate what factors determine if access to communications
technology causing interruptions is beneficial or not. As we found that interruptions can both
be harmful and beneficial, the focus should be on the factors that support one or the other.
Personality was confirmed as a factor that can affect the use and possible harm or benefits of
using this technology and while it has been investigated to some degree, we believe there is
