Technostress: the dark side of digital work

A new UK study has shown that employees are experiencing mental and physical techno-strain due to being ‘hyperconnected’ to digital technology, making it difficult for people to switch off from work.

Researchers conducted detailed interviews with employees from a range of professions and found that the cognitive and affective effort associated with “constant connectivity and high work pace driven by the digital workplace is detrimental to employee wellbeing.” The results were published in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology.

This new paper is the final part of a research project exploring the ‘dark side effects’ of digital working, which include stress, overload, anxiety and fear of missing out. The results highlight an overarching theme of ‘digital workplace technology intensity’ as a result of digital work job demands.

The findings in this latest paper indicate a sense of burden associated with working digitally which surfaced for most participants in perceptions of overload and feelings of being overwhelmed by the proliferation of messages, applications and meetings in the digital workplace. Fear of missing out on important information and contact with colleagues also contributed to stress and strain for digital workers, as did hassles encountered when using digital technologies.

What the researchers say: “Digital workplaces benefit both organizations and employees, for example by enabling collaborative and flexible work,” the lead author said. “However, what we have found in our research is that there is a potential dark side to digital working, where employees can feel fatigue and strain due to being overburdened by the demands and intensity of the digital work environment. A sense of pressure to be constantly connected and keeping up with messages can make it hard to psychologically detach from work.”

Fourteen employees were interviewed in detail and asked about their perceptions and experiences of digital workplace job demands and impacts to their health. In the analysis, the researchers explore potential underlying psychological, technological and organizational factors that may influence ways in which employees experience the digital workplace job demands.

Participants' dark side experiences were particularly shaped by a pervasive and constant state of connectivity in the digital workplace, termed "hyperconnectivity." These experiences contributed to a sense of pressure to be available and the erosion of work-life boundaries. The evidence also indicates that this hyperconnectivity has become the norm among workers post-pandemic.

Comments from interviewees included:

“[It’s] just more difficult to leave it behind when it's all online and you can kind of jump on and do work at any time of the day or night.”

“You kind of feel like you have to be there all the time. You have to be a little green light.”

“It's that pressure to respond [...] I've received an e-mail, I've gotta do this quickly because if not, someone might think “What is she doing from home?”

The lead author added: “The findings underline the need for both researchers and professionals to identify, understand and mitigate the digital workplace job demands to protect the well-being of digital workers.”

The research makes practical suggestions for employers, which include helping workers improve their digital skills and empowering them to manage boundaries in the digital workplace. The findings could also be used by technology departments to consider how to improve usability and accessibility of the digital workplace, as well as reining in the proliferation of applications. Understanding employees’ needs and preferences around digital working is important to inform such work.

“This research extends the Job Demands-Resources literature by clarifying digital workplace job demands including hyperconnectivity and overload,” the researchers explained. “It also contributes a novel construct of digital workplace technology intensity that adds new insight on the causes of technostress in the digital workplace. In doing so, it highlights the potential health impacts, both mental and physical, of digital work.”

My take: One of the big problems that workers have, and which will intensify in the age of AI, is that employers want their employees to be, like the battery, “ever ready.”

Our purpose in life is not to make money for an organization, nor to be the slave to AI. As a guru of mine once said, “the purpose of life is life.” When I questioned him further, he said, “our purpose is to live as we were meant to live, as human beings.” As a behavioral neurogeneticist and clinical psychologist, I look at our “design specs” - our neurogenetic makeup - for the answer  to how human beings are supposed to live.

When seen from this perspective, human “purpose,” in terms of work, boils down to four elements:

1. To advance and protect that limited number of people who we see as our immediate tribe (the famous ‘Dunbar number’ of 150 individuals - the maximum number we can have a meaningful relationship with). Some of this ‘tribe’ may be work colleagues.

2. To be surrounded by people we can look to for support and protection.

3. To have fun - so much recent research has shown that humans are designed to do best that which we enjoy.

4. To be valued, to have status among those who are important to us. Research has shown that status and a sense of safety are closely linked.

If we work and live in ways that we are not designed for, we become stressed, as the present researchers point out.  Working to please a machine, to become like a machine, is not why we live.