By John Salak –
Workers worldwide are stressed out by their jobs. The American Institute of Stress, in fact, reports that 62 percent of workers report high stress, while another 33 percent claim to face constant but manageable stress. Excessive workloads and people problems are cited as the primary causes of this anxiety.
It’s unclear whether the move to remote working setups alone is helping or hurting the situation. It is a burning question since more than 40 percent of American workers now stay home full-time or are in hybrid positions, according to Forbes.com.
A bigger contributor to workplace stress whether in a remote setup or not may be the growing reliance on digital technologies—emails, text messaging, online calendars and video calls, among others. These tools ultimately may be generating excessive amounts of stress, anxiety and overload.
Britain’s university of Nottingham now suggests that employees who are more mindful—focused on the present—in the digital workplace are better protected against these dangers.
“As work is increasingly mediated by digital technology, we wanted to find out the impact this is having on people’s health and whether there are ways to mitigate this. We found that being mindfully and confidently digital should be considered important elements of living a healthy digital working life in the 21st century,” reported study leader and university researcher Elizabeth Marsh.
The university based its insights on survey data from more than 140 British employees. The participants were surveyed about their experiences of the dark side effects of the digital workplace, which were identified as stress, overload, anxiety, fear of missing out and addiction and how these affected their health.
The results showed that more digitally confident workers were less likely to experience digital workplace anxiety, while those with higher mindfulness were better protected against all of the dark side effects.
“Digital workplace technologies like e-mail, instant messaging and mobile devices have been shown to contribute to perceptions of stress by employees and employees may experience stress when having to adapt to a constantly evolving digital workplace which can lead to burnout and poorer health,” Associate Professor Alexa Spence added.
The researchers identified mindfulness as a defined state of consciousness that involves paying attention to the present moment intentionally and non-judgmentally.
“The research shows that organizations need to consider how to manage digital workplace hazards alongside other psychosocial and physical risks in the workplace. Helping employees foster mindful awareness when working digitally could help overall well-being,” explained Professor Elvira Perez Vallejos.
