Observing performance of Indonesian shift worker from the view of mental
workload and chronotype
Ari Widyanti1, Indriyati Soenaryo1, Reza El Akbar1
1
Department of Industrial Engineering
Bandung Institute of Technology Indonesia
Labtek III 3 rd floor, Ganesa 10 Bandung Indonesia
Email : widyanti@mail.ti.itb.ac.id
Abstract
Shift work has been correlated with the change of human biology’s rhytms, such as
chronotype, which is defined as an attribute of human reflecting at what time of the day
individuals are active. Not only deal with chronotype’s changes, but also shift workers
suffer from imposed workload as a consequence of unusual time of the work, in which
affected performance eventually. Working in shift that match with chronotype, coupled
with optimum mental workload may lead to maximum performance of the shift workers.
This study observed mental workload, chronotype and performance of the shift workers
in one of Indonesian service company. Sixty shift workers who work in three different
shifts were participated in this study voluntarily. Mental workload was assessed using the
NASA-TLX, chronotype was measured using the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire
(MCTQ) and performance was assessed using superior performance appraisal. Result
shows different chronotype of the workers at different shift, supporting the correlation
between those two. As expected, mental workload could be used to predict performance,
as optimum mental workload leads to high performance, whereas high mental workload
leads to poor performance. However, the influence of chronotype to performance was not
found.
Keywords: performance, shift worker, mental workload, chronotype