What really bothers us about work interruptions? Investigating the characteristics of work interruptions and their effects on office workers

Understanding the mechanisms of work interruptions is crucial for reducing employee strain and maintaining performance. For this purpose, a study was conducted that examined how different interruptions and different characteristics of an interruption affect employees’ self-reported exhaustion. Specifically, a survey examined the effect of work interruptions due to different interruption types (email, short message, call, person) from different senders (e.g. supervisor, colleague) and with different contents (e.g. new task, relevant information). Data were gathered from 492 office workers in Germany during one working day. Structural equation models were calculated to assess mediation and moderation to answer the question to what extent characteristics of work interruptions have a negative impact on employees´ burnout symptoms. The results indicate that work interruptions cannot be examined purely on the basis of the frequency but must be considered in relation to the resulting overload, whereby different characteristics of work interruptions have different effects for the interrupted person. The results underline the importance of considering work interruptions in a more complex way than has previously been done to derive guidelines for human-friendly digital work design.