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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2024
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.00161 |
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| _version_ | 1866911820160172032 |
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| author | Ferguson, Sharon Massimi, Michael |
| author_facet | Ferguson, Sharon Massimi, Michael |
| contents | While distributed workers rely on scheduled meetings for coordination and collaboration, these meetings can also challenge their ability to focus. Protecting worker focus has been addressed from a technical perspective, but companies are now attempting organizational interventions, such as meeting-free weeks. Recognizing distributed collaboration as a sociotechnical challenge, we first present an interview study with distributed workers participating in meeting-free weeks at an enterprise software company. We identify three orientations workers exhibit during these weeks: Focus, Collaborative, and Time-Bound, each with varying levels and use of unstructured time. These different orientations result in challenges in attention negotiation, which may be suited for technical interventions. This motivated a follow-up study investigating attention negotiation and the compensating mechanisms workers developed during meeting-free weeks. Our framework identified tensions between the attention-getting and attention-delegation strategies. We extend past work to show how workers adapt their virtual collaboration mechanisms in response to organizational interventions |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_00161 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Circle Back Next Week: The Effect of Meeting-Free Weeks on Distributed Workers' Unstructured Time and Attention Negotiation Ferguson, Sharon Massimi, Michael Human-Computer Interaction While distributed workers rely on scheduled meetings for coordination and collaboration, these meetings can also challenge their ability to focus. Protecting worker focus has been addressed from a technical perspective, but companies are now attempting organizational interventions, such as meeting-free weeks. Recognizing distributed collaboration as a sociotechnical challenge, we first present an interview study with distributed workers participating in meeting-free weeks at an enterprise software company. We identify three orientations workers exhibit during these weeks: Focus, Collaborative, and Time-Bound, each with varying levels and use of unstructured time. These different orientations result in challenges in attention negotiation, which may be suited for technical interventions. This motivated a follow-up study investigating attention negotiation and the compensating mechanisms workers developed during meeting-free weeks. Our framework identified tensions between the attention-getting and attention-delegation strategies. We extend past work to show how workers adapt their virtual collaboration mechanisms in response to organizational interventions |
| title | Circle Back Next Week: The Effect of Meeting-Free Weeks on Distributed Workers' Unstructured Time and Attention Negotiation |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.00161 |