China Construction Bank Risk Management Report

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Buser’s and Peter’s finding showed that participants performed the best in Treatment Single and no gender differences in all treatment (Buser and Peter 641). More specifically, female performed slightly worse than male if forced to multitask while work better if choose their own schedule, but these differences are insignificant with the p value of 0.62 and 0.53 respectively (Buser and Peter 650). The only gender difference, as Buser and Peter suggested, is the male participants in the test inclined slightly more to switch between tasks than female did, but the significance level is 10% (Buser and Peter 651). These findings contrast with the popular myth that woman is a better multitasker and have implication to companies when assign tasks to employees. Companies should not assume that female employees have a higher multitasking skill than their male co-workers do. Instead, the companies should use effective evaluation tool to assess their employees’ multitasking ability in both genders in order to avoid irrational task allocation.

CONCLUSION

As modern technology evolves, the need of multitasking skill in modern workplace is increasingly growing. As most of the researchers have found that multitasking is not the best work condition for individuals so far, the company needs to understand this subject deeply so to make wise decision to better make use of it.

Lin et al. suggested that workers’ switching from task to task would lower their efficiency (Lin et al. 321). Meanwhile, this ability has age differences, but it can be improved through training with technology or task-handling strategies (Lin et al. 324). Therefore, the company can set up professional development for their employees in order to enhance their multitasking skill. On the other hand, for some positions where multitasking is heavily involved, the recruiting committee should consider including multitasking test into the selection procedure. According to Horst et al., such test effectively serves as a predictor of employees’ future performance and even the likelihood of being dismissal (Horst et al. 438). Furthermore, the company should be aware of the fact that, as Buser and Peter examined, women are not more inclined to and perform no better than men in multitasking condition (Buser and Peter 643). In other words, task allocations should depend on individuals’ multitasking ability rather than genders.

In short, the evidences provided in this paper would help the company to understand the implication of multitasking.

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