Telephone To Telepressure

Arjun Singh Rathore
Stressed! Burnt Out! These words have become a living reality for so many of us. Companies expect their employees to take calls, respond to emails and ensure compliance on even the social media platforms especially whatsapp, even after office hours. Stop turning our telephone into telepressure! Although most companies claim to have eight to nine working hours, but the fact is we are connected to work 24X7. A lifestyle with use of mobile phone technology after work hours, is posing a huge threat to our physical and mental health.
With the emergence of mobile technology as a medium of communication, organisations are eager to adopt it due to the stiff competition and to increase employee performance; enabling them to meet work related expectation via constant connectivity for work related activity anytime and anywhere. Since the technology changes rapidly, and due to the pressure from customers for faster services, organisations seek to improve or enhance productivity, enables faster response, reduce cost, improve customer services and increase efficiency. The increasing demands from workplace for faster response and 24 hours availability in case of any urgent cases increases the interference of employee’s personal life causing conflict in his/her personal life. Also such constant demand from organizations to stay connected with employees, causes employee dissatisfaction, increasing absenteeism, burnout and increasing the feeling of work overload and feeling of inability to detach from work.
The use of mobile technology such as Smartphones, tablets, laptops and other related devices enables employees to connect with work related activities of their organisation anytime from anywhere has increased. However connectivity anytime from anywhere has increased the work demands and expectations from workplace have complicated work and life balance causing work-life conflict.
These mobile technologies were initially used for teleworking or virtual work or teams to be connected together to perform the work activities remotely. As wireless telecommunication devices were used to make communication between employer and employees easier over the time and space causing both boundaries to become non-existent. This causes employees to remain connected with organisation they work at any time and from anywhere. This has both positive and negative effects; this could be a positive influence for the organisation as it might improve the response to the customer needs and productivity of the employee, whereas it could create a negative impact such as increase of stress and absenteeism among employees.
The transformative impact of technology on the modern workplace is plain to see. Face-to-face meetings have often given way to video conferences, mailrooms to email inboxes, and typewriters and carbon paper to word processors. Technology has also allowed a substantial portion of work and the workforce to move beyond the confines of a traditional office. It is common for digitally connected professionals to perform some of their work in cafés or shops, at home, even lying by the pool while on “vacation.”
In short, digital and mobile technologies contribute but they also take away. It falls on talent and technology leaders to weigh the efficiencies enabled by always connected employees against increased demands on scarce time and attention, and longer-term harm to worker productivity, performance, and well-being.
Working long, stressful days was once regarded as a characteristic of the proletariat life. Yet today, being “always on” is instead often emblematic of high social status. Technology may have physically freed us from our desks, but it has also eliminated natural breaks which would ordinarily take place during the workday. And recent research suggests that this effect is not restricted to the workday. According to the American Psychological Association, 53 percent of Americans work over the weekend, 52 percent work outside designated work hours, and 54 percent work even when sick, and the position in developing countries especially India is worse. Flextime, typically viewed as a benefit of technology providing greater freedom, actually leads to more work hours. Without tangible interventions, there’s little reason to think this behaviour will change anytime soon.
These environmental factors and cultural norms are increasingly compounded by technological design elements, some intentional, others not, that make technology use compulsive and habit-forming, taking on the characteristics of an addiction.
Digital technologies can quantify previously unquantifiable aspects of our lives, yielding fresh insight into how we spend our time. On a personal level, we can track our steps and count our likes, friends, and followers. At work, we are greeted each morning with dozens of unopened emails and reminders of sequences of meetings. During the day, workers are interrupted by continual streams of emails, texts, and instant messages.
Certainly, many such messages and notifications are necessary and helpful. But many others do little more than distract us from important tasks at hand, undermining productivity rather than enhancing it. The constant streams of messages, prioritized in terms of importance can create cognitive scarcity, resulting in a deterioration of the individual’s ability to adequately process information. Recent research has found that conditions of scarcity impose a kind of “cognitive tax” on individuals.
Who can resist checking a buzzing mobile device? It could be an email congratulating a promotion or a team message about a testing success. Or it could be spam. Yet we’re compelled to check, and when we become addictive even we can’t tell.
All of us are now effectively part of the Internet of Things: We have to leave behind “digital breadcrumbs” as we go about our digitally mediated lives. In the present era of cut throat competition where every organisation thrives to reach its customers/clients to address their needs 24X7 through the digital platforms, it is also the responsibility of employers to take care of their employees’ health. Poor sleep, Physical disconnection, Anxiety and depression of employees on every level is a serious cause of concern which needs to be corrected.
Employers should encourage Digital detox among its employees, by following these steps as a sample approach:
Monday: Unsubscribe from all unwanted emails & social media apps;
Tuesday: Turn off push notifications on social media apps;
Wednesday: Charge your device outside of your bedroom. Buy an alarm clock to replace your phone clock;
Thursday: When you sit down for dinner, shut off your phone;
Friday: Eat all your meals in a room without a TV, phone, or computer for the day;
Saturday: Stay off the social media for the entire day;
Sunday/Holiday: Turn your phone off for eight consecutive hours, while you are awake. Take your smart-watch off your wrist.
Employer and Employee both have to just put their mobile phones down once they call off their office hours, to get rid of work-life conflict and treat your mobile as your Telephone to exterminate Telepressure from your lives.
(The author is Executive Manager & Branch Head at JK Bank Canal Road, Jammu)

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