“Digital Stress: Study Shows 31% of Employees Exposed to Hyper-Connection”

A recent study indicates that 31% of employees are exposed to a hyper-connection.

Digital tools are taking up more and more space at work and are a facilitator. But they also carry the risk of “digital stress”, so that a recent study indicates that 31% of employees are exposed to hyper-connection.

“Emails, tele-meeting tools, internal messaging, internet access (…). All these tools have turned our lives upside down”, recalled this week William Dab, epidemiologist and former Director General of the health during a conference entitled “Digital stress, an emerging risk”.

“Could it be that these tools, or more exactly the uses of these tools, are turning against us?”, he questioned, during this intervention within the framework of the Préventica exhibition dedicated to health. and safety at work.

“What I find complicated since relatively recently, post-Covid and confinements, is the multiplication of channels, which means that we no longer know where it comes from”, between emails, messages by Teams, WhatsApp, Zoom , SMS …, testifies to AFP Adrien Debré, lawyer in a business firm. “It makes flow management difficult. It’s like Russian dolls that need to be opened,” he says.

With teleworking and organizations “more and more physically fragmented”, “we are all day behind our screens”, also reports Jérôme, an executive in the banking sector, who did not wish to give his last name. Even in the office, video meetings follow one another “at a breakneck pace”. “It’s tiring,” he said.

For Professor Dab, “we are going to talk about ‘digital stress’ when the amount of available information that we have to process exceeds our capacity”, a subject “rising” under different names: “infobesity”, “digital hardship” or “technostress”.

In the eyes of the epidemiologist, “the central phenomenon is that of ‘overconnection'” which can lead to “mental overload”. He points to “a vicious circle with a kind of continuous pressure that makes us zap from one source of information to another”, and the feeling at a time of “losing control”. A stressful situation “whose extreme form is burn-out”.

“As a doctor, I analyze this as a new form of addiction” whose consequences we still know little about, even if those of stress are “very well known”, says William Dab.

“Not only mental”, these are associated with an “increased cardiovascular risk, metabolic risk”, as well as “immune” effects.

Stress also decreases performance, and digital tools, “if they have opened the door to remote work, they also put us in a situation of isolation”. “In short, these tools that are so useful to us can also affect health and the quality of life at work,” he says.

To illustrate the “some data” on the subject, William Dab cites a study published in mid-May.

Led by the Observatory of infobesity and digital collaboration, it was carried out in particular via the analysis of emails from nearly 9,000 people continuously for two years.

Without claiming to have statistical value given the small sample of companies (10), it shows that 31% of employees are exposed to hyper-connection by sending emails after 8:00 p.m. more than 50 evenings per year (117 evenings for leaders).

In addition, more than 50% of emails are answered in less than an hour and these messages generate “a lot of digital noise” with 25% due to “reply to all”.

The study also measured the “full concentration” slots (one hour without sending emails). For leaders, their weekly share is only 11% (24% for managers and 42% for employees).

For the epidemiologist, this means “a loss of meaning, efficiency and depth of analysis”. “We may be reaching a threshold of toxicity”.

But “we can act”, assures the epidemiologist: by restricting the information to “what is really essential”, by keeping “ranges where the screen is closed” or even by physical or relaxing activities.

It is, ultimately, “not to let oneself be possessed as one lets oneself be possessed by hard drugs”…