Hybrid Work a Cause of Techno-Stress: ‘You Have to be There All the Time’
mrpg writes:
"It's that pressure to respond, like when I get an email and feel I have to reply quickly, or someone will think, 'What are you doing at home?'"
"The truth is that I leave my phone in the car at night, so I'm not tempted to look at it."
These are just two of the responses featured in a recent study exploring the challenges of hybrid work - the combination of in-person and remote work that has become more prevalent since the pandemic.
The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) has only just accepted "teleworking" as a new word, but society has been ahead of the curve for years, already grappling with the challenges of blending office and remote work. This hybrid format - particularly common in computer-based jobs - has attracted a lot of attention from academia. A recent qualitative study, based on 14 in-depth interviews conducted in 2022 with individuals ranging in age from 27 to 60 and from various work backgrounds, delves into the complexities of this new work dynamic.
"The article provides concrete insights into how the work experience is lived in a digital environment with high demands and intense use of technology," says Elizabeth Marsh, co-author and professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. "It analyzes how employees perceive being hyperconnected and feeling overwhelmed by their digital work, and the consequences for their mental and physical health."
Five common themes emerged from the responses, highlighting the "dark side" of hybrid work: hyperconnectivity, digital fatigue, system feature overload, informational fear of missing out, and techno-stress. Drawing from previous research, the article mentions that hybrid workers, driven in part by "productivity paranoia" from distrustful bosses, "can spend up to 67 extra minutes a day to avoid appearing to be faltering."
Several of the phrases cited in the study reflect common complaints about hybrid work: "You feel like you have to be there all the time, as if you had to be that little green light that's always on," "I'm constantly on Slack on my phone, and sometimes it affects other things I should be doing," and "I could be working, but I get distracted and think, 'I'm going to check my emails,' and before I know it, I've spent half an hour just looking at emails without doing anything in particular."
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