Constant connectivity can be a mixed blessing

BEING perpetually connected to work — thanks to smartphones and other mobile devices — has contradictory effects.

University of South Australia Research Fellow at the Centre for Work + Life Fiona Macdonald

Being perpetually connected to work — thanks to smartphones and other mobile devices — has contradictory effects for many. The upside is greater flexibility and control, as we can communicate and manage our work anywhere, anytime. The downside is the more we use these technologies the more likely we are to feel burned out from work.

Studies of the impact of communication use or smart technologies for work have found people can simultaneously experience autonomy and overwork. Better connectivity is associated with perceptions of control and productivity, which have been linked to greater job satisfaction. However, constant connectivity has also been found to lead to increased stress and feelings of overload, including by facilitating longer work hours.

Research by my colleagues Barbara Pocock and Natalie Skinner at the Centre for Work + Life last year found frequent checking of work emails on mobile devices outside work hours was associated with high levels of work-life interference. Work intruded into home, family and social life, and was accompanied by feelings of time pressure. Yet the same people who experienced work-life interference also found it helpful and efficient to be able to access work emails after hours because it helped them to manage demands.

Others have also found associations between the use of smart technologies and work-life interference and feelings of work overload, or “technostress”.

What researchers don’t agree on is how technology causes these problems, or even if it is really the cause. Debatable questions include whether technology, particularly email, creates stress by increasing the total amount of work, or whether it creates stress by making it possible for work to spill over into other parts of life.

One argument is that smart technology changes our relationship to time and space, changing the nature of work.

US sociologist Ben Agger refers to smartphones creating an “iTime” inhabited by white-collar workers, especially professional workers, whose labour now largely consists of writing emails, texts, blogs and memos. In iTime we think and act differently, and the constant connection offered by smartphones compels us to connect to avoid missing anything. The smartphone is our worksite and it sets the work pace, constantly pushing email to us wherever we are and whatever the time.

Other analysts put less emphasis on the technology and more on how it is used. Pocock and Skinner suggest the real culprits in work-life interference may be unreasonable workloads and workplace cultures with expectations of responsiveness and access.

We handle our emails out of work hours because we will fall behind if we don’t. We have also come to believe we should be doing this to perform our jobs well.

Melissa Mazmanian and Ingrid Erickson argue a key factor often overlooked is “availability”.

Based on more than a decade of research on communication technology used by professional workers in the US, they argue there is a trend for service organisations to sell employees’ availability to ­clients as a part of their services. The “total availability” of employees has economic value for companies, and many people in professional service occupations appear to take this expectation for granted.

Thus Mazmanian and Erickson foresee a future where employees have less say over the temporal conditions of their work.

Clearly, to avoid burnout from long work hours and constant connectivity, employers and employees will need to find new ways to set boundaries around work.

Fiona Macdonald is a research fellow at the University of South Australia’s Centre for Work + Life.