This time, I'd like to talk about procrastination in the workplace.
In your workplace, do you procrastinate on some things?
There are probably many workplaces where people put off dealing with problems, saying, "I can do it next week," or "I can't do it now, so it's okay.
In my own experience, I procrastinated on a major campaign, and the day before the campaign started, the problem caused serious trouble and I had a very difficult time.Procrastination is considered to be a disease of our time, and it is something that organizations want to solve because it reduces the performance of work.
The research presented here investigates the causes of procrastination in the workplace.
Content of the study
The questionnaires for the study were distributed primarily in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing, China.
The participants were selected from full-time employees of 32 companies in the manufacturing, service, and education sectors.
Due to the diversity of the sample sources, these samples showed a wide coverage and representation.To avoid local cultural bias and to ensure the validity of the questionnaire, preliminary in-depth interviews were conducted individually with five employees prior to formal implementation.
This was done in order to ensure that the participants fully understood the questions.
We made it clear that the survey would be conducted anonymously and would be used for academic research purposes only. During the formal research phase, data was collected through a three-phase time-staggered survey over a four-month period, with a total of 400 questionnaires distributed.
The 378 validly retained questionnaires showed a valid response rate of 94.50%, with males accounting for 46.83% of these samples.
43.92% of the respondents were below 30 years of age, 52.65% were between 31-50 years of age, and 3.44% were above 51 years of age, indicating that the majority of the respondents were young or middle-aged.
The questionnaire included
Abusive bosses
Ostracizing behavior in the workplace
Procrastination in the workplace
Psychological resilience
Psychological isolation
Control variables
The study included a survey of the following topics.
The results show that procrastination is more likely to occur in workplaces with the following characteristics
Bosses act as power harassers without hesitation.
Exclusionary behavior among workplace members
They have to perform their duties at home, even when they are not working.
These characteristics have been observed.
The most influential factor related to procrastination seems to be an abusive boss.
He Q, Wu M, Wu W, Fu J. The Effect of Abusive Supervision on Employees' Work Procrastination Behavior. Front Psychol. 2021;12:596704. Published 2021 Jan Front Psychol. 2021;12:596704. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.596704
Conclusion
The mechanism by which procrastination occurs in the workplace is said to be the result of optimistic behavior that leads to the procrastination of problems in order to avoid some kind of stress.
The stress factors were cited as being unhelpful bosses, dragging each other down in the workplace, and major stressful events.
Since procrastination itself is a defensive measure to avoid stress, monitoring procrastination alone may lead to excessive stress in the workplace.
Therefore, when things don't go as planned, it becomes necessary to look at the stress that is occurring in the workplace, but sometimes the person who is in the position to manage is the stressor.
In order to solve the problem, we may need to start looking at our own behavior and change it.
