In many ways, the internet and modern technology are wonderful. They allow fast dissemination of information, break down barriers to business and social interaction (this site is a perfect example), and can enhance overall productivity and living standards by lowering costs and raising output.
But there is also a dark side, an example of which is being on-call 24 hours a day to answer work emails and queries. Anyone that has ever been employed by a multinational company will know what I am talking about. Such as when you are required to participate in late night telephone hook-ups or answer emails from Hong Kong, London, or the United States that are so “important” that they must be answered now, rather than at a less intrusive time, say between 8.30am and 5pm.
For many workers in white collar jobs, the traditional work day is fast becoming a relic from the past and they can longer switch their brains off and relax once they have left the office or over the weekend. Their Blackberry or smart phone must always be on hand and checked at regular intervals just in case that all important (but usually meaningless) email comes across that requires urgent action.
And then there are the other distractions that are afforded by the internet and social media platforms, like Twitter, which often drags our attention away from the task at hand, further lengthening the time taken to complete our tasks.
All of which has prompted Christopher Mims from the Wall Street Journal to yesterday question at what point the “distraction-industrial complex” is detrimental to worker productivity:
The best research we have tells us that, given the opportunity, humans tend to interrupt ourselves on average every three minutes. We’ll switch from a Web browser to a Word document, for example…
What’s devastating to our productivity: interruptions we didn’t invite, especially if they draw our attention to an unrelated task, such as an incoming email, instant message or other alert…
One study from Microsoft indicated that programmers who were interrupted by an incoming email lost 10 minutes every time they switched from their original task, on top of however long it took them to answer the email. Earlier studies suggest that workers lose as much as 40% of their productive time when they are regularly interrupted.
And yet every trend in consumer and enterprise technology is toward more frequent and effective interruptions…
There is also this from Bloomberg about China today:
Chinese banking regulator Li Jianhua literally worked himself to death. After 26 years of “always putting the cause of the party and the people” first, his employer said this month, the 48-year-old official died rushing to finish a report before the sun came up.
China is facing an epidemic of overwork, to hear the state-controlled press and Chinese social media tell it. About 600,000 Chinese a year die from working too hard, according to the China Youth Daily. China Radio International in April reported a toll of 1,600 every day.
Microblogging website Weibo is filled with complaints about stressed-out lives and chatter about reports of others, young and old, worked to death: a 24-year-old junior employee at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide Inc., a 25-year-oldauditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP; one of the chief designers of China’s next-generation fighter planes at state-run AVIC Shenyang Aircraft Corp.
“What’s the point of working overtime so you can work to death?” asked one commentator on Weibo, lamenting that his boss told employees to spend more time on the job.
Given the trends in technology, workforce burnout from the 24-hour work cycle is likely to become an increasing issue globally, driving rates of depression upwards and lowering productivity.
One wonders how business ever got along before internet and low-cost telecommunications, when employees worked a standard eight hour work day and actually enjoyed their free time.
