Digital tools are taking up more and more space at work and are a facilitator. But they also carry the risk of “digital stress”, while a recent study indicates that 31% of employees are exposed to hyperconnection.
“Emails, tele-meeting tools, internal messaging, internet access (…). All these tools have turned our lives upside down,” William Dab, an epidemiologist and former Director General of Health, recalled this week during a conference entitled “Digital stress, an emerging risk”.
“What has been difficult for me relatively recently, post-Covid and confinements, is the multiplication of channels, which means that we no longer know where it comes from”, between emails, messages by Teams, WhatsApp, Zoom, SMS…, he declares to AFP Adrien Debré, lawyer for a commercial firm. “It makes flow management difficult. It’s like a Russian doll that has to be opened,” he says.
With teleworking and organizations “increasingly physically fragmented”, “we are behind our screens all day”, also reports Jérôme, an executive in the banking sector, who did not want to give his last name. Even in the office, video conferences are happening “at a breakneck pace.” “It’s exhausting,” he said.
For Professor Dab, “we are going to talk about ‘digital stress’ when the amount of information available that we have to process exceeds our capacity”, a topic that “is on the rise” under different names: “infobesity”, “digital hardship” or “digital hardship”. technostress”.
In the eyes of the epidemiologist, “the central phenomenon is that of ‘overconnection'” which can lead to “mental overload”. He points to “a vicious circle with a kind of continuous pressure that makes us jump from one source of information to another”, and the feeling at one point of “losing control”. A stressful situation “whose extreme form is burn-out”.
“Not just mental,” these are associated with “increased cardiovascular risk, metabolic risk,” as well as “immune” effects.
Stress also reduces performance, and digital tools, “if they have opened the door to teleworking, they also put us in a situation of isolation.” “Ultimately, these tools that are so useful to us can also affect health and quality of life at work,” he says.
To illustrate “some data” on the subject, William Dab cites a study published in mid-May.
Led by the Infobesity and Digital Collaboration Observatory, it was carried out in particular through the analysis of emails from nearly 9,000 people continuously for two years.
Without claiming to have statistical value given the small sample of companies (10), it shows that 31% of employees are exposed to hyperconnection by sending emails after 8:00 p.m. more than 50 evenings a year (117 evenings for the leaders).
Also, more than 50% of emails are answered in less than an hour and these messages generate “a lot of digital noise” with 25% due to “reply all”.
The study also measured intervals of “full focus” (one hour without emailing). For leaders, their weekly turnout is only 11% (24% for managers and 42% for employees).
But “we can act”, assures the epidemiologist: restricting the information to “what is really essential”, maintaining “ranges where the screen closes” or even carrying out physical or relaxation activities.
It is, in short, “not letting oneself be possessed as one allows oneself to be possessed by hard drugs”…
Source: BFM TV
