Why Are We Working So Much? Applying Social Norm Theory to a Workplace Behavior
Behavioral Science, as a field, has grown rapidly in the past decade. Starting with work conducted by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky[i] to understand the heuristics and biases in decision making to Richard Thaler winning the noble prize in 2017[ii], human behavior is being broken down and analyzed in entirely new ways. Behavioral Economics is a subfield which involves analyzing the choice architecture where a decision is made and creating environmental tweaks to change behavior, termed Nudging[iii]. Nudges have been used to enact significant change from increasing organ donation to building better technology. Although, recently the question has turned to what occurs after the nudge is removed. If behavior reverts, then further actions must be taken. Creation of new norms is the required extension, turning the temporary, nudged behavior into the new default option. One of the leaders of this field, Cristina Bicchieri, has designed a framework for breaking down the drivers of behavior and organizing these motivators into four categories. The remainder of this article applies this framework to understand a workplace behavior. Although it focuses on social norms, any required change to create the new norms would first use the science of nudging to adjust the behavior.
The Behavior
Economies of developed nations have shifted to ones composed of knowledge and information work. Once laborers clocked-in, worked their shift, and then clocked-out, leaving their work behind until the next workday. Contents of work were generally fixed to a specific location, whether this was due to the machinery involved or the necessity to communicate (which was most efficiently done in-person). Now it is completed at a desk, any desk. With an internet connection and a computer, most information workers can engage in work regardless of their location or the time of day. This is calling into question the 40-hour work week which as been tantamount to Western, developed countries[iv].
Much of this transformation has been due to advances in workplace technology[v]. Paper reports are now Excel sheets and PDFs, in person meetings are video chats, and paper planners are Google calendars. Phones are carried with access to all communications a worker has with her colleagues and clients. With this change, flexibility has been introduced to the workplace, which was initially heralded as a huge success for employees. Although, the benefit granted to workers who have gained this “flexibility” is beginning to wain as they recognize the lack of definition around when the work day is done[vi]. Without set hours and locations, if a company does not explicitly outline expected working hours or define required amounts then different, undefined workplace norms become official rules for employees[vii].
Ambiguity around work hours, a byproduct of work flexibility, has brought with it many unintended effects; primary of which is that workers are spending more time working[viii]. Any time a worker spends working is time which cannot be used to pursue other endeavors, whether they are building better relationships with family, personal development, or pure leisure. Money is necessary to live and for most employment is the only means to make an income, but a negative situation occurs when people use their excess time to work without additional income.
Continuous access allows notifications to bring one back to work whenever a task needs completion. Along with more salient demands, the changing nature of work and unlimited availability of information means that many projects no longer have the same sense of completion that was once possible[ix]. Without defined rules for when to engage or announce something as complete, workers are left to rely on believes and perceived expectations of others[x]. This results in the always-on nature of the current information economy, causing many to expend excess time without compensation.
Overworking not only takes away from time spent on other endeavors, generally resulting in an overall lower sense of happiness and wellbeing, it also lowers a worker’s productivity[xi]. Even though this may appear counterintuitive, as people work instead of pursuing leisure, sleeping, or other rest activities their cognitive abilities also decrease. Just as a physical laborer would require time to heal their sore muscles after a 100-hour week, cognitive employees require time off to recuperate their mental faculties.
Employers are beginning to recognize this phenomenon and are taking steps to create work environments which discourage letting work consume a workers’ lives. Breaking from traditions of working employees into the ground, these employers are encouraging a work-life balance which yields lower employee turnover and greater levels of corporate success[xii]. Companies are creating nudges, in hopes to adjust employees’ behaviors. These nudges can be beneficial when present, but they fail to address the underlying issues which cause an employee to feel they are responsible to work beyond extended hours. Even though the trend is to encourage employees through better work environments, there are still many companies which are staying with tradition and avoiding any conversations regarding time expectations or limits on hours employees should spend working[xiii].
For those companies reluctant or failing to adapt with the changing requirements of the information economy, governments are beginning to step in creating new laws to help ameliorate the effect technology has on employees. In America, the government is cracking down on low-paid, salaried employees who could make more money being hourly because of the amount of overtime they work[xiv]. More extreme, the French government has recently passed a law which bars companies from allowing their employees to email after work hours[xv]. This illustrates two examples of governments taking action to address the negative outcomes resulting from the “always-on”, information economy.
Within all the discussion of how the environment is ripe for overworking, is the specific decision an employee makes to engage in the behavior. The focus of this analysis is on the behavior of working beyond designated hours (loosely defined as 40 hours as this is the norm for western nations) exhibited by salaried, information workers. These parties are of special interest because they are paid the same amount of money regardless of the hours that they work. An example would be a marketing manager at a retail store who works 40 hours at her store to make a salary of $40,000. Beyond this time spent in the store, she finds herself replying to employee requests and taking late-night phone calls adding on an additional 15 hours of work a week.
This leads me to ask why this marketing manager would choose to engage in work outside of her designated working hours? There are obvious economic reasons such as security and psychological reasons such as enjoyment, but this article will argue that even these factors can be influenced by independent beliefs and social expectations.
Analyzing the Behavior
In this boundaryless world of work, tasks can be completed whenever and wherever. Full-time jobs are still considered 40-hours a week and rough 8 am to 5 pm work hours are still the gold standard of designated work hours[xvi]. Even when companies explicitly break from this tradition there are likely designated times around work such as 45 hours per week, 8 hours a day while at least being in the office between 10 am and 2 pm, or 4, 10 hour days[xvii]. The behavior under inspection is when an employee decides to work beyond the traditional 40-hour work week or their companies specific outlined hours.
Choosing to engage in work beyond designated hours has a variety of contributing factors ranging from the pure individual beliefs to the complete external expectations of others[xviii]. Most common are the beliefs that one must work beyond designated hours to avoid sanctions or to be noticed as a higher-achiever. Whether there are rules that demand work is completed regardless of the time or day of the work or a tacit understanding driven by the mental model of work that a worker holds, this belief results in working until “necessary” tasks are completed and beyond.
Outside this commonly held belief, behaviors are influenced by social expectations generated through the activities that an employee believes their colleagues are exhibiting[xix]. Some expectations are on the exhibited behavior of colleagues such as the hours worked by average and high-achieving employees. Estimations of these work behaviors are likely inflated as recent research suggests that information workers engage in productive work only 2 ½–3 hours a day[xx]. Other expectations are based on what a worker believes his colleagues expect of him. An example of this is an employee judging that their manager expects them to work 60–70 hours a week not because that is what has been explicitly stated but instead that is what their manager does on a routine basis[xxi].
Due to the degree of possible influences, instead of hypothesizing each factor, employees exhibiting this behavior were organized into four personas. Each of the following descriptions explores the influencing factors leading to the behavior and an example of a personified worker’s thought process.
Four Personas to Categorize Drivers of Behavior
The Pressured Employee
Most employees who engage in work beyond designated hours believe it is required to maintain their current job[xxii]. Although they desire to be occupied with other activities, they believe that the average employee must go above and beyond to ensure they are not laid off. An example of this would be a financial analyst who would like to enjoy time with her kids on the weekend. Yet her mental model suggests in order to maintain her employment she must spend the afternoon preparing for a meeting that she will attend on Monday afternoon. As she engages in the work, she thinks about a coworker recently telling her how she hadn’t slept a full night in a month because of work.
The Workaholic
Dramatized in media most frequently, yet still occurring in the world there are those who engage in work as their main life motivator. Instead of striving to allocate their resources toward other engagements these workers purposefully choose to let work consume their life[xxiii]. Motivated by a belief that work is the best means to contribute to society and that anything else is a waste of their resources, these workers prefer to work at any time which it is necessary, regardless of the context. Overall, for these individuals, working fulfills their sense of need.
To imagine this persona, think of a worker who always stays late at the office. Instead of joining the team for after-work drinks or heading home along with the rest of his colleagues, the Workaholic will remain beyond engaging in any work that can be done. Even when projects come up which are unlikely to yield a promotion or recognizability, he will take it as it gives him another reason to continue working instead of engaging in the rest of the world.
The Overachiever
Either respected by the office as a rising star or depicted as a “brown-nose” by colleagues, every company has a few overachievers. Although they favor activities outside of their occupation, over-work seems like the only avenue to career progression[xxiv]. Demonstrated by an employee who follows the mantra “first in the office, last to leave” and beyond, a worker with this persona will somewhat reluctantly put work before any other activities. This happens even when it means she works late into the night and on the weekends. She is driven to this behavior by a belief that going above and beyond in hours worked is the only way to be recognized and messaging from her company’s leadership which communicated that high-achievers work extended hours.
The Status Seeker
Wealthy individuals once exhibited their fortune by avoiding any type of work; pure leisure was achieved by hiring servants to complete any undesirable activities. Completely shifting, social status is being now pursued through the appearance of busyness[xxv]. For this reason, a subset of workers engages in this behavior to signal their importance through how little time they have for activities outside of work.
Workers who choose to take on demanding work or neglect to delegate, when it would be beneficial, in an attempt to seem important are status seekers. These employees view prolific figures such as Elon Musk who publicly discuss their lack of time for anything but work and form a belief that this type of lifestyle is a necessary characteristic of the business elite[xxvi]. Acting on this expectation a worker pursues whatever work can be done to mimic their models.
Component Parts
Breaking down these personas, we identify how four components of behaviors contribute to the motivation of each. Component parts are split into beliefs which are held without condition to other’s believes and expectations which are based on the views of others. Each component will be explained and connected to relevant personas, also options to alter each will be explored.
Beliefs
Beliefs exist within an individual and are independent of the thoughts or actions of anyone else. Split depending on their objective or subjective nature, beliefs occur regardless if they are accurate. First, factual beliefs are the most basic explanations of behavior. Everyone holds many factual beliefs about the world from actions one must take to survive, for example, one must drink hydrating liquids daily, to behaviors exhibited to succeed, for example showing up to work is the first step to getting paid.
All four employee personas hold Factual Beliefs driving their behavior, although each is different. Foundational to change, these beliefs must be altered in order for a new behavior to form. Beginning with The Pressured Employee, they hold the Factual Belief that they must work beyond required hours to remain employed. If true, then cultural change beyond the realm of this analysis is required; yet in the instance this is false, they would require the new knowledge that there are people who succeed in the organization who work only the required amount of time.
The workaholic holds the Factual Belief that work is a means to gain meaning in life. Work to them is a channel to fulfill their need to feel engaged and have ownership over a piece of their life. They believe work is a means to achieve meaning and to dispute this counter evidence must be presented, such as research suggesting that work is not a means to happiness. Shifting to the overachiever, their main Factual Belief is that working extra hours equates to recognition for possible promotion or other positive career outcomes. Similar to the pressured employee, if true, it is beyond this analysis, but if false, counter facts must be shown.
Lastly, the Status Seeker holds two pivotal Factual Beliefs. First, they believe that hard work and appearing busy are equivalent to having an elite status. Second, they must believe that a person holding their job can be considered elite. As their main driver is a pursuit to join the elite working class, they must believe their current workload would be enough to qualify them to join and they must instead seek most prestigious titles or projects to gain recognition.
Normative beliefs differentiate themselves by factoring in an individual’s opinion about an action; anytime one expresses their view of a subject it is a normative belief. For example, an individual suggesting that people should not steal from their employer is expressing a normative belief because while most would agree, this is still an opinion instead of an objective fact. These beliefs are held internally and not affected by others. One further example, to ensure comprehension, is religious beliefs which are held closely by people and not easily changed just because a crowd has conflicting views.
Workaholics hold normative beliefs that workers should prioritize work beyond all other life engagements. This opinion leads them to act with a moral backing that their action is right. Despite their pursuit to fulfill their need for work and inner demand for achievement, their priorities are misaligned. Workers only achieve peak performance when they incorporate rest into their schedule[xxvii]. A healthy lifestyle includes not just dedication to work, even if it inspires meaning and purpose, it demands time spent with friends and family, sleep, and other endeavors outside of work. Therefore, to alter this normative belief, Workaholics must understand that one’s occupation should be a part of their life but should not be its entirety. Adjusting correctly will yield a new belief that a worker should take all actions necessary to bring the healthiest version of themselves to work.
Expectations
Shifting over to the other two behavior components, expectations are interdependent on the actions and thoughts of others. The “other” in this case is considered the actor’s reference network which is defined depending on the context[xxviii]. At work, a reference network is like one’s colleagues, management, and clients. Whereas, one develops expectations on style depending on the behaviors and instructions of celebrities who they have never actually interacted with.
First, empirical expectations are beliefs about the actual actions taken by others. Whether or not, one has observed others actions this expectation is built around the estimation of what those in their reference network are doing. For example, one may hold the empirical expectation that others wash and condition their hair. Although this individual has not witnessed anyone taking this action, they form an expectation around the facts about others they have gathered.
Overachievers and Status Seekers both form empirical expectations around the behaviors that others hold which leads to their position. For the overachiever, they may witness those who have been promoted to positions that they would like to also occupy and believe they have achieved it due to excess hours worked. Similarly, the status seeker may view the elite workers of the world, may that be within their company or within the global business context, and posit that they achieved those positions due to working beyond the hours that were expected of them.
Regardless if these estimations are accurate, they are held by these actors and must be adjusted in order to create new behavior. The ideal way to break these expectations is to use actual data regarding the behaviors that people are exhibiting or anticipating. This relies on that the data suggests that the behavior alternative to the current expectations achieves better outcomes and when it does if communicated correctly it should uproot these expectations.
Normative Expectations shift from the behaviors of others to the expectations that others have regarding your behavior. In other words, if person A holds a Normative Expectation about person B that means that A has an expectation regarding what behaviors B anticipates A to exhibit. For example, a worker cuts their hair because they believe that their co-workers expect them to appear well-kempt.
Overachievers take actions in an attempt to be recognized and rewarded. They believe that managers and leaders expect their highest performers to always be available and ready to complete any task. Using hours worked as a proxy for overall performance, they anticipate leaders expect top employees to work beyond others or be “always-on” and will correlate that with excellence[xxix]. On the opposite side of this spectrum, Pressured Employees can also have normative expectations. Believing that managers and leaders expect hours worked beyond what is required if there is a task to be completed, these workers put in additional hours to increase their appearance of being an adequate performer.
In order to counter this expectation, contradicting evidence must be communicated to these individuals. While extra work may appear to be a way that people are recognized as high performers it is unlikely that this is the sole factor yet just a proxy for some other behavior such as being a leader in projects or picking up extra tasks. This information will allow an employee to pursue the direct actions which others expect high performers to engage in instead of just trying to perform directionless extra work.
Measuring this behavior
Data Required
Observing over working behavior in the lens of social norms is unique and there has yet to be any data collected to understand the influencing factors. The following is a breakdown of the data which would be necessary to analyze the variables affecting decision making. Split into four categories, the data would require multiple collection methods.
Actual behavior data would be the first category of data required. This would include hours worked by employees of different departments. As the focus of this analysis is on salaried, information workers, collecting this data would necessitate the use of a software which tracks activity on all devices. Ideally, statistics would be collected on the actual activities performed at work, at least at the level of what software they were using. A sample output would breakdown work in the following manner: email/calendar consisted of 30% of one’s time, Excel 50%, and PowerPoint 20%.
On top of this actual behavior data, further information on the networks of employees at the organization would be useful. As previously mentioned, when behaviors have a socially conditional component to them, reference networks are used to understand whose expectations matter. Through either a graph articulating the communications between employees or surveys of who employees generally interact with, this information would be used to construct a list of people or groups who influence each persona.
Beyond actual behaviors that employees exhibit, their views of what behaviors others exhibit and expect must be collected. This category is considered comparison data and will be used to adjust employee’s expectations. As the area of interest is how statistics on hours spent at work contributes to various outcomes, we must evaluate what employees believe will happen at different levels of hours worked. First, to understand how employees view their patterns of behavior with their performance we must ask them their prediction for how many hours a week they have worked on average over the past month. Comparing the difference between estimation and actual, split by an employee’s performance evaluation would yield bias in self-evaluation.
Next, we must ask employees to estimate the hours of work needed to be considered average or above average. With the individual comparison data, we can correct for any bias and understand averages for what the collective organization views the hours needed to achieve each status. Together these questions will help us to understand what employees believe hours worked by others are and the expectation that members have of the group. If this method is too complicated, another approach would be to ask reflective questions such as “Out of ten of your colleagues how many do you think have worked beyond 40 hours in the last week?” Regardless of the questions asked, the results will be used to gauge social expectations.
This quantitative data may not be enough to categorize employees into one of the four personas. Self-reported data will be used to further understand the motivations of employees and match this to their behaviors and comparisons. Simplest of qualitative questions, employees who worked beyond expected hours can be asked, “Last time you worked beyond required hours why did you do so?” This open-ended question allows the interviewer to peer into the employee’s mind and begin to detect their motivation. When determining the morality behind a worker’s rational for working beyond expected hours the prudential-nature of their belief must be determined. Workaholics can be asked questions such as “why do you believe working is your top priority?” This assists in determining if they are motivated because it is the right thing to do or it is better than any of their alternative options.
Further examining specific drivers two approaches can be used. The first is Likert-scale type responses, for example, “On a scale 1–5 how required is working beyond set hours in order to remain employed?” Another approach is to give vignettes, or simple story-based scenarios, which asks if the employee believes the hypothetical person would engage in work beyond required hours. One vignette would be, “A worker just began at [Organization Name] and is mimicking high performing employees to impress his manager.” Adding this data provides further evidence of the motivations each persona would be likely to hold.
Finally, to tie up loose ends and ensure a holistic view of the organization is achieved, employee’s sentiment regarding the appearance of being busy at work must be gauged. This could be gauged directly by asking, “How many hours must someone work to be considered busy at work?” Approaching this differently, workers can be asked how important the appearance of being busy is at achieving high-performance ratings. Overall, this quick section will be used to adjust the beliefs of Status Seeking employees.
Given the nature of the data, there are two main methods of collection. All data on actual behaviors must be generated from an objective system. Even if the processes used to collect the data are subjective, for example, performance ratings, the data gained must be housed in a system or database instead of being self-reported or collected by employees of the organization. Thankfully most large employers now use human resource management systems (HRMS) to house all employee data and there are other systems such as Microsoft Workplace Analytics and Sapience to track time spent on an employee’s devices. Systems such as these also can be used to illustrate graphs of employees connections to be used in detecting reference networks.
Remaining data categories will be collected by involving employees and leaders. Comparison data will require leveraging the behavioral data to see how employees predict and react to their own usages and others. Self-reported and culture/status data will purely solicit the opinions of employees without priming them with their own data. Method for collecting all this data starts with the simplest, a survey up to individual interviews with employees. Regardless of the specific method used there will have to be at least two independent sessions with at least a month apart, ideally, these will also occur at multiple locations if the company operates around the nation. This will assist in ruling out all extraneous factors.
Once collected, the data will be used to categorize those who work over designated hours into one of the four categories previously outlined. Within each of these categories, a Cross-Sectional Analysis will be used to predict the level of behavior for each group. This is determined by mapping out the normative expectations of the employee which is a straight, horizontal line and the empirical expectations which are generally an s-curve based on the level of expectation compared to the behavior exhibited. Together these curves from an equilibrium point which suggests that as empirical expectations rise, this behavior is more likely to be exhibited.
Changing the Behavior
Viewing change through a theoretical lens
Behavior, after being quantified and analyzed, can be turned into actionable insights used to create new, improved behaviors. Using the collected data, the four employee personas can be refined and confirmed. Through understanding their drivers of behavior and social expectations, each can be given a broad pattern of behavior classification. This is not a precise science and for brevity and illustrative purposes, I assigned each of the four personas to one of the four classifications even though arguments can be made for the other classifications. The following are the four behavior patterns and what must be changed in the individual or the environment to inspire behavior change.
Customs
Customs are the most basic form of behavior classification. They are not affected by social expectations, nor are they subjective to the beliefs of the holder. Instead, they are purely behaviors exhibited to fulfill one’s needs. A pivotal example of this is umbrella usage. When it rains an individual does not believe it is morally correct to prevent oneself from getting wet, nor do they consider if others are using umbrellas or expect them to do so. Deciding to use the umbrella purely connects to one’s factual belief that it is more comfortable to stay dry.
Pressured employees most closely connect to customs as they exhibit their behaviors due to a factual belief that one must work beyond what is expected in order to stay employed. This may have been brought upon by witnessing the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis or an upbringing which emphasized hard work; it may be true at one’s workplace or false, but this is the driving factor in their behavior.
To break free from this type of thinking, one must be educated on the actual behavior of the organization or the behaviors which would be desired if a company focuses on employee wellbeing. The former is communicated through example profiles of employees who are considered meeting expectations, yet they still work 40–45 hours a week. The latter would be determined using data from competitors or consultants. Messaging these employees requires facts which disconnects hours worked from productivity expectations.
Top-down action is required for these customs to be broken. Given customs are not influenced by the actions of others, expectations are less relevant in creating a solution. Instead, all pressured employees must be messaged directly, and their individual cost-benefit analysis must be altered. Leaders who espouse working 40–45 hours a week and enjoying time outside of work will help create new factual beliefs that a worker who keeps a well-rounded life both inside and out of work are the most productive and thus least likely to be terminated.
Moral Norms
Building upon Customs, Moral norms add in the subjective nature of Normative Beliefs. While still not conditional on the actions or expectations of others, these norms include an individual’s opinion. Workaholics most embody Moral Norms as they hold the belief that work should be the number one priority in an employee’s life.
As was previously discussed, this belief is incorrect as more work does not equal more productivity. While Workaholics may appear the busiest or the most valuable employees this can be a byproduct of them embracing an “always-on” attitude. This may be positive for them at first, but in the long run, will lead to burnout and other negative work and health outcomes. For this reason, these employee’s Moral Norm must be changed using education on why time must be spent on non-work activities.
Similar to Customs the most important group to enact this change in leadership. Organizations, as a whole, must embrace the idea that working too much can lead to negative outcomes, without this a Workaholic will continue to find those who do not believe to continue feeding their desire to work. When leadership joins this conversation, it can begin to shift the culture and identify Workaholics as destructive to the environment. Although this process may ween out some Workaholics who are not willing to shift their moral belief it will help the rest to adopt a healthier style of work and in turn become more productive.
Descriptive Norm
Shifting over to behavior classifications which are conditional on the actions and opinions of others, Descriptive Norms include relying on Factual Beliefs combined with the expectation one has on the behaviors of others. For example, one may believe that it is important to stay warm in the winter and expect that others will wear coats when it is below freezing and therefore will choose to wear a coat.
Status Seekers most resemble behavior inspired by this norm. These employees work beyond the required hours as they desire to achieve the status of the elite worker. Believing this is achievable through work hour behaviors is founded upon the expectation that other elite workers are engaging in work all the time, well beyond a 40–45-hour work week. Their reference network may be within their own firm or beyond; it may be the worker who everyone reveres or statements by the likes of Elon Musk suggesting he engages in a 100-hour work week. Regardless of the inspiration, these employees pursue status through working longer hours.
Subverting this type of thinking requires breaking both the belief that hours work correlates with elite status and that elite workers always work long hours. Addressing the former requires survey data from employees as was collected in the Culture & Status category. Reference networks for employees who are a part of The Status Seeker group must be determined and then their belief about work and status explained. Many factors contribute to this analysis and thus this would be a hard task for one organization to take on independently. This instead requires the effort of a large trade organization or even governments to reeducate employees that hours worked doesn’t beget success and should not be equated with elite status.
Opening the black box of hours worked by elite employees in a firm should assist in curbing the Empirical Expectation held by status seekers. These employees could be given the opportunity to identify employees who they believe are of high status and then given reports on their hours worked. If these are at or below the average this should adjust The Status Seekers expectations, if they are above the average it will instead reinforce their belief. This said, it is important to ensure that these employees are not actually working longer than most employees.
When average elite workers do work longer hours, a less direct approach should be taken. Leadership should identify some high performers and elite status workers who do work only the designated hours and create a program centered on these employees. Through communications and guidelines, these employees can be profiled with the intent that their behaviors be mimicked.
Social Norm
Social Norms, commonly described to include any behavior that is influenced by others, are the combination of Factual Beliefs and the expectations that one has about what others expect of them. Anytime someone chooses to wear the sports colors of their local team when watching them play they do so as they believe it will support the team and expect that others expect them to make that choice.
Overachievers most exemplify employees choosing an action due to Social Norms. These employees believe that working long hours will lead to positive work outcomes, while also believing that their managers expect the behavior in order to be recognized for reward. Although previously described, Pressured Employees may also be influenced by social norms. This is due to them being affected by the same belief as overachievers except on the other end of the spectrum (managers expect long hours in order to remain employed).
Adjusting this behavior is most challenging as it requires to not only get truthful responses from managers about their expectations but also getting these employees to view them as authentic. This process begins with the collection of managers’ beliefs through surveys and interviews. Similar to Descriptive Norms when the majority believes excess work is not required those facts must be communicated, when the majority does not then specific people must be highlighted. Leadership must endorse these messages and embody the new behaviors in their personal work otherwise this change is bound to fail. If managers publicly announce they do not require people to work excess hours but then get upset if an email is not responded to on a weekend this entire movement can appear insincere.
Conclusion
Developed nations’ economies are shifting towards more information-based occupations. With this change, tacitly agreed upon behaviors and legal frameworks are becoming irrelevant. Workers can now access work from anywhere and many firms have yet to even set an expectation on the required number of hours worked[xxx]. The result is an “always-on” workplace where many workers are engaging in work beyond required hours for many different reasons.
This article dissected a behavior using a theoretical approach to understanding social norms. Many factors contribute to an individual’s choice to work excess hours, this framework allows us to transcend them and look purely at the motivators contributing to this behavior. With this, we can shift our attention to data that needs to be collected in order to categorize employees exhibiting this behavior into personas, four of which have been hypothesized. This data is pivotal as even with these speculated personas, there is overlap and counterarguments to be made. Only with collecting behavioral, self-reported, and comparison data is exclusivity between personas possible. Lastly, potential solutions for each of the behavioral categories were explored and key parties required to change were identified. As previously described the science of Nudges could be used to begin the process of behavioral change which then will be reinforced by the creation of new norms following this framework.
Regardless if the hypothesized profiles and solutions are of value, it is my intention that this framework be the foundations to analyze and group employee behavior. In this case it was used to further understand the reason why salaried information workers engage in work beyond that of which is required of them but there can be many more applications such as meeting scheduling behaviors, compliance with time reporting, and many more. Now it is time to get into the workplace and collect data, thus beginning the process of validating this framework!
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