Many professionals find it hard to keep up with all the e-mail exchanges within their company. — Photography Tonktiti/Getty Images/AFP Relaxnews
As home working becomes more widespread, employees are overwhelmed by digital demands. They waste more and more time checking notifications on Slack, but above all sorting through their inboxes, all of which has a detrimental effect on their concentration and productivity.
Since its invention in 1971, email has become an indispensable part of work life. Employees send and receive dozens of emails a day, whatever their sector of activity. None of them would dream of giving up email, even though many complain about the workload involved in managing these messages. In fact, 40% of employees spend two to three hours a day checking and replying to their email messages, according to research conducted by LiveCareer, surveying 1,032 workers. Every year, they reportedly spend the equivalent of three weeks or even a month sorting through their work inboxes.
This represents a considerable waste of time for companies, but especially for those who work in them. It's not uncommon for people to glance at their email messages outside office hours, whether on public transport or in line at the supermarket. In fact, 84% of employees surveyed by LiveCareer check their inbox in their own time, and 49% do so every "few hours." A bad habit that contributes to blurring the boundary between professional and private lives, even if it may seem harmless.
Checking email at all times of day can put us into a permanent state of alertness, which can have harmful effects on our concentration and increase the risk of burnout. Initially perceived as a real time-saver, email has become time-consuming and tyrannical. Managers and employees send email messages to one another all the time instead of using the phone or professional messaging systems like Slack.
Always available?
As a result, many professionals struggle to keep up with the pace of all these email exchanges. Some feel obliged to respond to these digital demands within an hour of receiving them, as revealed in the latest annual study on the subject from France's Observatoire de l'infobésité et de la collaboration numérique (OICN). This demand for hyper-availability and hyper-reactivity creates additional stress and anxiety among employees, who fear missing out on important information – or looking like a slacker – if they don't keep an eye on their work mailbox.
This excess of email, that researchers have dubbed "email overload," interferes with employees' concentration and increases their mental load. An overloaded inbox is quickly perceived as a lack of organization and, above all, a lack of control over working time. Add to this the abundance or even over-use of meetings, and a feeling of panic can ensue.
However, a number of safeguards have been put in place in recent years to prevent the effects of this always available, always connected lifestyle, including the effective implementation of the right to disconnect for French employees. But companies are still struggling to get to grips with the issue, even if some have introduced email-free days to relieve their workers of this burden. The OICN recommends clarifying modes of communication between employees, making sparing use of the reply-all function and thinking twice before copying others into email messages. The organization also recommends that no one should have to manage more than 100 email messages a day. – AFP Relaxnews
