Effects of Listening to Music on Worker Productivity

¶ … Listening to Music on Worker Productivity:

Music can basically serve various purposes with some of these purposes being fulfilled at the individual level while others at the level of the society. For an individual, music can be a platform for expressing emotions, promoting relaxation, offering stimulation, facilitating mood change, and being a source of comfort. In some case, music can be used to entertain, in therapy, improve the effect of the other arts, and offer aesthetic enjoyment. In the past few years, there have been increased concerns and analyses regarding the impact of music on work quality and worker productivity. This is primarily because workers tend to listen to music to accomplish certain purposes while doing their work. While some workers like to listen to music when they are seemingly losing focus, others listen to music when involved in increasingly repetitive job or when working in a noisy or too quiet environment in order to feel more lively and active.

Psychological Effects of Music:

The impact of music on worker productivity can mainly be understood through analyzing the psychological effect of music on humans. Generally, numerous efforts and time have been taken in attempts to explore and identify the psychological effects of music. There investigations have covered effects on respiration rates, heart rate, stomach contractions, muscular tension, skin conductivity, blood volume, blood pressure, and motor and postural reactions. However, the effects of music through these measures have not provided a clear trend.

Many studies have shown that stimulating music contributes to improved and increased response in many psychological measures. Similarly, calming music also leads to increased response in several psychological measures since it does not usually contribute to reduced psychological response (Young, p.1). Moreover, the effects of calming music can increase over time and be cumulative as the music continues to have an impact.

While it is still uncertain, evidence of various studies suggests that music impacts psychological arousal based on the expected direction. In this case, exciting music tends to lead to increased psychological arousal while calming music produces reverse results. Notably, a person's cognitive responses to music may intervene in the psychological reactions and provide certain variability in findings. These individual differences are also dependent on how the person listens to music, his/her interpretation of music, his/her personality, like or dislike of the music played, whether he/she is musically trained, and his/her normal level of psychological arousal.

Worker Productivity:

The quality of work or productivity of an employee is determined by the ability of the worker to produce novel and appropriate work. Moreover, the quality of work and productivity is also determined by the ability of the employee to be creative and achieve the expected goals within the organization. Generally, an employee's quality of work and productivity is seriously affected by certain moods, especially stress. According to the findings of numerous researches, mild positive feelings have positive impacts on the way with which cognitive material is arranged and therefore affects creativity (Lesiuk, p. 173).

The beneficial impact of music on task performance and worker productivity can mainly be explained and determined through increases in state positive affect. In this case, employees tend to perform better in their work responsibilities when music provokes pleasant moods and enhances the state of psychological arousal. As a result of the pleasant moods and enhanced state of psychological arousal, the employee obtains intrinsic support in creative task performance and problem-solving. This in turn enhances the quality of work produced by the employee or worker and his/her productivity.

Case Study:

In order to examine the effects of music on worker productivity and to analyze the claims by various researches, it's important to conduct a small case study on workers. The trial is carried out at a large retail company where 50 out of 200 workers are provided with personal stereos to wear at work for a period of three weeks. Through the use of experience sampling method in which real-life events are examined as they unfold in daily life, the trial is geared towards examining the daily emotional responses to music. This study is also aimed at evaluating the impact of these emotional responses to music on the productivity and quality of work of employees with the personal stereos.

During this trial, the participants carried the personal stereos during their working hours and were paged randomly once after every four hours for the three-week period. During the paging process, the workers were expected to record their present activity in a response booklet. The main goal of recording their present activity was to identify the daily emotional experiences related to music and the impact of these experiences on the quality of work and productivity of the employees.

The study is based on the fact that people's minds tend to wander during which individuals focus on the imperfections of life. Music is used as a tool of recollecting a person's thoughts to the current moment because melodious sounds help in motivating the release of dopamine in the reward segment of the brain (Padnani par, 4). The biological effect of music is similar to the effects of eating a delicacy, smelling a pleasant aroma, and staring at something attractive or appealing. Therefore, music breaks the person out of thinking in one way or direction during wandering that is usually a product of unhappiness, boredom, and stress brought by life's issues.

According to the findings of the study as the large retail company, approximately 50% of the recorded episodes or pagings were associated with listening to music. The examination of these recorded emotional experiences indicated that listening to music enhanced an individual's psychological arousal. The resultant psychological arousal contributed to improved quality of work and productivity of the employee. This is primarily because the music experience enhanced the workers alertness, positivity, and ability to focus on the present moment. Furthermore, the study indicated that there was a 10% increase in productivity for the workers with personal stereos.

Discussion: