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How HR can use the ‘power of interruption’ to drive employee belonging This myGrapevine+ exclusive explores the positives and negatives of workplace interruption, unpicking whether managers should build it into an employees workflow and how that ‘annoying’ part of work-life might drive cohesive outcomes… Those Microsoft Teams and Slack notifications or, when in a central workplace setting, a colleague suddenly appearing at your desk – or the desk mate who just won’t stop chatting; for some people, there’s nothing more annoying or disruptive than being interrupted at work – especially if one is in a flow state of peak efficiency. And this general consensus and received wisdom on interrupting, namely that it’s an inherently bad thing, has bled into the world of occupational psychology too. But recent research has suggested that there’s an unexpected silver lining that may just play a pivotal role in employee wellbeing in a way that counterbalances the negative impact on productivity. That’s right: as researchers predominantly from the University of Cincinnati say in a paper entitled Excuse me, do you have a minute? An exploration of the dark and bright-side effects of daily work interruptions for employee well-being published in the Journal of Applied
