11-07-2024
How do employees know when they have done enough work?
Two faculty members at the Daniels School of Business are taking a novel approach to the question that contributes to the growing science-practice rebellion against 24/7 work cultures. Assistant Professor of Management Kate Zipay, who is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Working Well (CWW), and Allison (Allie) Gabriel, the Thomas J. Howatt Chair in Management and CWW faculty director, have developed a proposal called “Intuitive Working™: A New Lens on Work Consumption.”
The pair have received a $50,000 grant for an 18-month research project by BetterUp and its Center for Purpose and Performance. The center’s mission is to partner with industry leaders to deepen understanding of the intersections of well-being, purpose and performance.
According to Zipay and Gabriel, Intuitive Working™ represents a motivational approach that drives work processes for employees, wherein employees are in tune with their own work-related needs and demands, rather than being driven by external and emotional cues. Their research builds on insights from intuitive eating — an approach to eating based on hunger and satiety cues rather than situational and emotional cues.
Zipay and Gabriel argue that work consumption shares many psychological underpinnings with how people choose when, what, and how much to eat, allowing employees to reframe work as an autonomous and adaptive process. As such, Intuitive Working™ reflects an approach to work similar to maintaining a “balanced diet,” giving a theoretical and practical antidote to the damages of excessive work and the untenability of modern work cultures.
“We believe our work will encourage employees to craft a healthy and balanced relationship with work that cultivates a heightened sense of knowing when they have done enough — effectively allowing them to walk away from work days feeling ’pleasantly full’ and absent of intense burnout and fatigue typical of modern work experiences,” Zipay says. “When employees are able to intuitively work, they will be able to make careful choices about when and what work can be done in a sufficient and fulfilling way.”
The project fits the mission of the CWW and highlights a vital way that the center is conducting cutting-edge scholarship that will help people thrive at work and home. “We see this prize as signaling that our ideas are impactful, and that the work we are doing at the Center for Working Well is important and being recognized by other thought leaders on well-being at work,” Gabriel says.
