Increasing Employees’ Resources Lets them Take on More Demanding Work Tasks - the Case of the Trivago Flowlab

Knowledge workers usually have a lot of freedom in defining their job and management is challenged by managing this process and monitoring how well they use their resources. On some days one might have slept badly and thus does not feel capable of starting a complex analysis and instead decides to only answer e-mails and leave work a bit earlier. In those cases, the employer loses productivity and thus it seems important for employers to limit those days by making sure people feel most of the days like they have the resources to take on the more demanding work tasks. In order to test if increasing employees’ resources has an effect on employees taking on more demanding jobs, a six-week-program called the “trivago flowlab” was offered to 117 employees at trivago, a German middle-sized company employing mainly knowledge workers. Parallel to the program, employees had to rate daily in an app after work their resources and their work demands for the past workday. Participants showed a significant increase in their resources and work demands ratings. Limitations because of a non-experimental study design are discussed.