Anneli B. Haake PhD - Music at Work » music and stress

Bleak picture of work stress acc to new research

anneli — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:00:19 +0000

According to new research based on the figures from the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK, less than a fifth of employers provide support for stressed employees at work.

Short-term stress-related absences topped 42,000 in the three months to December last year.
Of the 593,930 people claiming the Employment and Support Allowance, 234,670 (39%) are doing so for mental and behavioural disorders.

Another survey showed that:

stress is the second biggest cause of short term absences
stress is one of the leading cause of all long-term absences for non-manual workers

While it is important to develop adequate interventions to support employees who are absent due to stress, and help them to come back to the workplace, it is also important to look into ways of counteracting and preventing stress from building up in the first place.

Music listening is by no means a ‘magic pill’, or a perfect solution to all stress-problems in organisation. Yet, it is worth noting the health and well-being related behaviours at work that many employees engage in, through listening to music.

Music can contribute to relaxation: through channeling stress and negative emotions, and through reminding listeners of time and space outside of work. Many participants in my studies felt that music in the office provided them with a break from work and created space for reflection. Interestingly, participants described how increased relaxation could improve their focus and aid creative thinking. Being able to manage distractions was associated with a sense of relaxation.

However, having to listen to imposed music and getting distracted was perceived as annoying and stressful. So not only can music enhance relaxation, but it can actually also generate stress – if it is imposed on employees. Therefore, perceived control over the music is particularly important – perhaps the most important aspect – if music is to enhance relaxation at work. It would be a shame if music ended up causing stress, given the high levels of stress that already exist in many workplaces. Especially when music can do the opposite.

Music at work can help stressed employees

anneli — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:57:55 +0000

As I have written earlier, work-related stress is related to ill-health. Stress in the workplace can also reduce productivity, in particular when stress manifests itself as a reduction in psychological well-being.

This also has a very real and clear financial impact on organisations and their budgets, as stress at work costs the UK economy 10% of the total GDP every year. These figures are likely to rise further, as recent figures from the Trade Union Congress (TUC) suggest that stress related illness is on the rise in the UK due to spending cuts in the public sector.

Even though listening to music at work will not solve all these problems, there is a high incidence of music listening in the workplace and results show that stress-relief is one of the major functions of music at work. Therefore, it is worth examining this in more detail.

Listening to music at work is often viewed as an activity that helps to regulate and improve mood. Many of the respondents in my survey mentioned that music listening had stress- reducing functions (using descriptions like “it relaxes me”, “calms me down”, “eases stress”, and “soothing”).

For some people, music was experienced as cathartic and provided stress relief through representing negative affect in a public environment where acting out the experience was not deemed suitable;

Lets me think, allows me to chill and unwind, if it’s a punky song I can imagine all my stresses being screamed out with the song even if I’m not screaming along with it. (202, F: 18-25yrs, Administrative Assistant)

Statistical results from the survey showed that stress was positively significantly related to whether participants agreed that music could help them relax, which confirms that music can have relaxing functions at work – particularly if the participants are stressed at work.

The reports of mood improvement, relaxation and stress reduction can be understood as well-being related experiences. Given that people are more likely to report high subjective well-being if they experience positive affect more often (Diener & Lucas, 2000), this could be a route through which music listening can influence employee well- being. In other words, music can create a sense of well-being in offices, through providing frequent experiences of positive mood.

There is also another perspective on the way in which music at work can improve well-being. Being able to manage distractions is associated with a sense of relaxation, and having to listen to imposed music and getting distracted is perceived as annoying and stressful.

Researchers argue that there is no real difference between which sounds are perceived as music and which as noise, but that the main characteristic is that the event is out of the listener’s control. This becomes important to music listeners in work settings. Music provides a sense of control over mood and environments, and this experience is an important aspect of stress relief. Other studies have also found that control is a particularly important aspect of wellbeing. In organisational psychology, it is recognised that control is one of the determinants of well-being at work (Warr, 1999). Furthermore, control has been identified as influential in research on music preference and pain control (Mitchell et al., 2006), and post-operative care (MacDonald, 2006), as well as in studies of music listening and well-being in daily life (Batt-Rawden & DeNora, 2005).

Office noise can have a negative impact on productivity, reduce job satisfaction, increase dislike for the office environment, and even cause medical symptoms (see review in North & Hargreaves 2008). Office noise also increases stress, and the negative effects are made worse when people believe they have no control over it, or when they are not used to it previously (ibid). It is therefore not surprising to find that employees value music listening, as it is often used to minimise office noise. But the negative effects of office noise should also be of interest to managers, given that it can produce stress.

Given that music gives employees an opportunity to manage unwanted office noise, it is clear that having this opportunity can also reduce stress and other negative effects of office noise.

Top 10 reasons for listening to music in the office

anneli — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:57:34 +0000

Why do people listen to music in the office? Here are the top 10 reasons, according to academic research:

Relaxation: “calms me down”, “eases stress”, “soothing”
Concentration: “improves my ability to focus on what I am working on”
Affect management: “helps me to remain positive”
Block out distractions: “helps me concentrate, especially when someone else is in the office, or talking on the phone, or having a meeting in my office”
Create variation: “I couldn’t work without it. It would just be a nightmare. Too tedious a job, inputting all day.”
Helps to think about something else: “If music was not my distraction, then something else would be, i.e. something unproductive such as fiddling with papers or gazing out of the window”
For entertainment: “It keeps me company when there isn’t anyone else around”
Because they enjoy it: “I feel more comfortable, it makes things more enjoyable, therefore I feel better about doing it, I guess. I suppose, in a nutshell, I just like it.”
Makes time go quicker: “it just helps the day to go on. It would be a long day without it.”
Lifts energy: “I feel a physical feeling of almost elation.”

Source: Haake, A.B. (2011) Individual music listening in workplace settings: an exploratory survey of offices in the UK. Musicae Scientiae, 15 (1)