Control Your Technology

Excessive dependence on technology impacts stress, productivity and the environment

By Chris Benjamin

The age of automation has us dependent on communications devices: desktops, laptops, Blackberries, cell phones, pen drives—the list goes on. Technology is a blessing and a curse: we are always available, always on call. We are always using energy.

Research shows that employees spend an average of 11 minutes on project work without interruption, and each interruption lasts about 25 minutes.

Elaine Toms, Canada Research Chair in Management Informatics at Dalhousie University, studied “people in an average office. We parked people in a lab and gave them more work than they could do,” she explains. “We interrupted them with texts and phone calls three times an hour. The interruptions lasted one to three minutes, but it took several minutes for them to get re-focused.”

Gloria Mark, a Professor of Informatics at the University of California, draws similar conclusions. “People rate stress in five categories,” she says. “Frustration, time pressure, workload, mental pressure, and general stress.” Her studies show that although productivity stays the same with multiple interruptions, “people score significantly higher in all stress categories when interrupted.”

In at-work interviews with typical office workers, “People noted burnout, stress and crazy work environments in high-interruption workplaces,” Mark says, adding that she suspects email addiction is also a major problem. “The problem is you can’t test addiction until you take email away and see how people react, and the companies most likely to have email addiction are the least willing to try using it less.”

Taking breaks is even considered too luxurious for most information workers, she says. Instead, they interrupt their own project work with unrelated, but still work-related, tasks to break up their days. “We see self-interrupting almost as frequently as external interruptions,” she says.

Without a willing guinea pig to go cold turkey on email, Mark focuses on technological solutions to controlling quantity and content of information. “We found that people are happier when they can switch between multiple media,” she says, postulating that the choice between telephone, email or face-to-face interaction allows workers to control their area of focus at any given moment. But not all interruptions are bad, and some are essential. “When people work closely together on a project they need to exchange almost constant information, and this offers social benefits as well.” The worst interruptions are those having nothing to do with a person’s current stream of thought.

To screen out the “bad” interruptions, Mark notes that employees of one auditing firm wore black hats when they didn’t want interruptions. Technology firms, with a mind to informatics, are hard at work creating tools to send that same message, politely but firmly, to people across the virtual world.

The unplug experiment
For a more radical approach, however, they might look to the Eyelevel Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is a non-profit artist run centre that displays contemporary art. This year the gallery went back in time to celebrate its 35th anniversary. For 35 days Eyelevel unplugged itself back to 1974 technology: a telephone, file cabinet, a desk and typewriter. Its usual web site was replaced by a typewritten image with a phone number and mailing address.

The project was spawned from Director Erin Foster’s frustration with sitting at a computer all day in a supposedly social space. “I was tired all the time, getting migraines and neck aches, suffering information overload, and feeling like a slave to my computer,” she recalls. “Email can be a good tool but we are too reliant on it.” Worse, from a business standpoint, was that the computer created a wall between the gallery’s only full-time employee and the public it serves. Unplugging was both an art project and a social experiment to test the computer’s impact on human relationships.

“It was liberating,” Foster says. “Rather than be burdened by excessive administrative work I can be more engaged with the public.” Foster says her productivity stayed high during the experiment. Instead of engaging in long, drawn-out email conversations, with occasional messages disappearing in the ether, she could solve problems in minutes by telephone or face-to-face meetings. “Email can be efficient, but sometimes it actually creates more work,” she says. “There were a couple times I wanted to look something up on Wikipedia, but instead I said, ‘Oh! I know someone who would know that,’ and I’d give that person a call instead.”

Foster says that as the project ran she engaged in lively discussions with members of the public about how computers have tethered us. “The consensus was that the computer sucks energy from you,” she says. Foster is exploring office re-design options, like creating a stand-up working kiosk with the computer in the corner, and a separate greeting desk. Part of the goal is to allow her to move around more at work. “We have two legs and I feel we were put on this earth to move,” she says.

…many larger companies that have scaled back on technology, usually for economic and environmental reasons, and have found unexpected mental health benefits.

A greener corporate culture
The lessons Foster learned are echoed by many larger companies that have scaled back on technology, usually for economic and environmental reasons, and have found unexpected mental health benefits. As Jim Comtois, an energy efficiency expert at Natural Resources Canada, puts it, “A greener workplace generally results in happier employees.”

Dalhousie’s Elaine Toms offers the simple solution of turning communications devices off and checking them only as needed. “Somebody I met, who was with a senior group in government, asked his employees to turn off their Blackberries and cell phones,” she says. “He gave them a 10-minute break every 50 minutes to check their messages.” Employees could then focus on project work uninterrupted, and increased their productivity while saving energy.

Small measures can go a long way, as Linda Vasko of The Central Group – Innovation Centre, an in-store display and packaging firm in Ottawa, found when she initiated a Conservation Lunch-and-Learn series. Vasko works to educate employees on health and wellness as well as environmental issues. Part of reducing dependence on high technology is shifting gears and getting active. The Central Group gives employees odometers and encourages them to take walking breaks, measuring their daily steps.

The company is attempting to create a greener corporate culture, regularly sending employees tips on how to reduce environmental footprints, like carpooling and cycling, eating local food, and using energy-efficient home heating systems. All of these outreach efforts are a boon to employee morale, Vasko says. “The staff have reacted fabulously. There is a lot to be said for knowing you work for a company that puts action behind its words.”

Melanie Cookson-Carter, Operations Coordinator for Joggins Fossil Cliffs, a museum and World Heritage Site on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, feels the same way about her workplace. In its second year of operation, the museum has collected numerous awards, from the Lieutenant Governor’s Architecture Award to recognition from the LA Times as one of the world’s best travel destinations.

Although not the museum’s primary focus, sustainability and employee health are a priority. The key has been smarter use of technology, starting with the building itself. “The architects were forward-thinking,” Cookson-Carter says. “They wanted the building to take as little from the earth as possible.” The result is an unimposing structure that gets 60% of its energy from green technology, like solar panels, and is equipped with a living green roof that provides the building’s toilet water. “The facility has a huge impact on staff and community,” Cookson-Carter says.

That’s because 90% of museum staff were recruited locally, from the small town of Joggins, to minimize commuting distance. The museum held training sessions to ensure locals had the necessary skills. That training instilled a green and healthy corporate culture. Museum staff are encouraged to reduce stress with physically active breaks, and bicycles are provided for riding to the coast.

Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC), Canada’s leading supplier of outdoor gear and clothing, has developed a low-stress workplace within its retail stores, partially because it has always focused on sustainability and health. As part of that focus, MEC’s stores are built with large skylights and an open-design concept, to maximize natural light and reduce dependence on electricity.

This design creates a laid-back, yet vibrant workplace. Anyone who has ever entered a MEC store is familiar with the buoyant energy the employees offer. Susan Andrew, Sustainability Coordinator for the Burlington store, deflects credit for her store’s environmental achievements to staff. “They bike to work and garden vegetables at work,” she says.

Like Erin Foster at the Eyelevel Gallery in Halifax, MEC staff resist technological dependency so they can remain oriented to the needs of the public. But as The Central Group has shown, offices can scale back and get active again too. University of California’s Gloria Mark has observed some large firms limiting email usage hours, or trying email-free Fridays. From little things, big things grow.

Article published in Your Workplace magazine issue 11-5