When you work in an office, you have to remain productive despite continual interruptions. After a while, responding to questions, texts, calls, and emails becomes less annoying as you develop the habit of calmly picking up where you left off. However, new research from Switzerland finds that this calm is only superficial, and continual interruptions at work lead to an unconscious increase in the stress hormone cortisol.
A recent study by Stiftung Gesundheitsförderung Schweiz, Job Stress Index 2020, reveals that almost a third of Swiss office workers experience workplace stress. Concerned about the health effects of chronic stress, which may include exhaustion alongside other adverse outcomes, a multidisciplinary team from the Federal Lab for Analytics at ETH Zurich embarked on a mission to find ways to detect and remediate workplace stress.
As a first step, the researchers measured the effects of social pressure and interruptions, which are the most common causes of stress in the workplace. They recruited 90 individuals, 44 females and 46 males between 18–40 years of age, willing to participate in experiments lasting just under 2 hours. The study was published on November 7 in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Setting the stage for these tests, the researchers converted one of ETH Zurich's laboratories into three simulated office spaces, each with multiple workstation rows. Every workstation had a computer, monitor, chair and a kit with which the "worker" could collect saliva samples for the researchers. The samples were analyzed to assess individuals' levels of cortisol.
The participants were divided into two groups, and all of them took part in typical office tasks, including typing up handwritten documents and arranging client appointments. During the sessions, they were questioned six different times regarding their mood. Portable devices measured their heartbeats as the researchers tracked cortisol levels in their saliva samples.
The workers in the first of these groups continued to go about their work uninterrupted, except to provide saliva samples. The second group was interrupted by chat messages from superiors with urgent requests for information. Because of this interruption, participants in the second stress group released almost twice the level of cortisol as those in the first stress group.
