Abstract
Recent progress with wearable sensors has enabled researchers to capture face-to-face interactions quantitatively and given great insight into human dynamics. One attractive field for applying such sensors is the workplace, where the relationship between the face-to-face behaviors of employees and the productivity of the organization has been investigated. One interesting result of previous studies showed that informal face-to-face interaction among employees, captured by wearable sensors that the employees wore, significantly affects their performance. However, the mechanism behind this relationship has not yet been adequately explained, though experiences at the job scene might qualitatively support the finding. We hypothesized that informal face-to-face interaction improves mood state, which in turn affects the task performance. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated the change of mood state before and after break time for two groups of participants, one that spent their breaks alone and one that spent them with other participants, by administering questionnaires and taking brain activity measurements. Recent neuroimaging studies have suggested a significant relationship between mood state and brain activity. Here, we show that face-to-face interaction during breaks significantly improved mood state, which was measured by Profiles of Mood States (POMS). We also observed that the verbal working memory (WM) task performance of participants who did not have face-to-face interaction during breaks decreased significantly. In this paper, we discuss how the change of mood state was evidenced in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity accompanied by WM tasks measured by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).
Highlights
In spite of the widespread use of various computer-mediated communication tools, face-to-face communication among team members is still recognized as a key factor for better productivity of the team
The importance of face-to-face interaction among team members for better team productivity has been well recognized by experience and observed in previous psychological and social studies (Guzzo and Shea, 1992; Stewart, 2006)
We observed that after the break, participants belonged to Gf 2f significantly decreased prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity during verbal working memory (WM) tasks while keeping the high task accuracy, whereas those in Galone did not
Summary
In spite of the widespread use of various computer-mediated communication tools, face-to-face communication among team members is still recognized as a key factor for better productivity of the team. Another study targeting outbound call centers reported that break time liveliness of the workplace, which is defined by the frequency of employees’ bodily movements (caused by face-to-face interaction) measured by accelerometer, had a significant positive effect on their telemarketing sales performance (Watanabe et al, 2012). Another study using wearable sensors targeting school children has suggested a relationship between break time face-toface interaction and scholastic performance (Watanabe et al, 2013). All these results point to a strong relationship between informal face-to-face behaviors and productivity on the basis of quantitative data
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