The Digital Dilemma
Technology has permeated every facet of our lives, but what impact is it having on employees and organisations?
Employees’ digital behaviours are undermining organisational productivity and impairing their physical health and mental wellbeing.
This causes low employee engagement, setting up behaviours which are hard to break.
The findings summarised in this infographic are based on a White Paper I wrote titled What Digital Distractions Are Really Costing Organisations. A copy can be downloaded here.
Dr Kristy provides brain-based solutions and strategies to minimise workplace digital distractions. Support your high-performing employees' performance at work with pragmatic science-based strategies.
Digital Distractions
Did you know that phones and devices are designed to appeal to our psychological weaknesses?
Technology cause neurobiological changes in our brains making employees more susceptible to digital distractions and dependance.
The pings and alerts trick our brains into thinking everything is important and urgent.
We experience a ‘state of insufficiency’ because there’s always more emails, notifications, calendar reminds pinging and piling up.
We get hits of dopamine as we watch the metrics of unopened Slack/Jira notifications decline as we plough through tasks.
Yet this dopamine hit stops our impulse control centre from working effectively, so we can get stuck doing these ‘light’ tasks instead of carving out time for productive ‘deep’ work.
Technological tools that permeate our workplaces have literally been designed to hijack our attention and to be VERY addictive.
Yikes!
Truth Bombs
3 out of 4
workers say they feel distracted at work1
every 6 minutes
Is how often the average knowledge worker checks a communication device (RescueTime)2
40%
of the modern work day is now consumed with multitasking via communication tools3
21%
of working hours spent on entertainment, news, and social media4
62%
of all employees, across the age spectrum, admitted to spending around an hour of each work day looking at their phones5
Knowledge workers
on average, spend just two hours and 48 minutes a day for productive tasks (or 14 hours and 8 minutes a week)6
2.5 hours
is how long knowledge workers spend in their inbox per day7
74 times
is on average, how often workers check their email per day
Dr Kristy provides brain-based solutions and strategies to minimise workplace digital distractions. Support your high-performing employees' performance at work with pragmatic science-based strategies.
Multitasking Myth
Technology has permeated every facet of our lives, but what impact is it having on employees and organisations?
Employees’ digital behaviours are undermining organisational productivity and impairing their physical health and mental wellbeing.
This causes low employee engagement, setting up behaviours which are hard to break.
The Brain Cannot Multitask
Multitasking takes approximately 40% longer to complete each task than monotasking9
Multitasking prevents information from being properly encoded by the brain
After a distraction, it takes the average adult 23 minutes and 15 seconds to reorient their attention. This is called the ‘resumption lag’10
Multitasking increases error rates, depletes mental energy and releases a stress hormone in the brain which in turn makes it harder for employees to commit details to memory
Employees attempt to compensate for distractions by working faster and multitasking. However, this results in higher stress levels and more frustration as well as increased time pressure and effort, which impairs decision-making and performance11
Through tailored training and programs Dr Kristy reduces employees' digital inefficiencies, which in turn boosts their performance.
Meaningless Meetings
With modern technology meetings are now easier to organise than ever before. The ease of implementation and inclusion has resulted in more meetings being conducted and more employees being invited to meetings (it’s so easy to quickly send a calendar invitation- we call this the ‘zero cost of inclusion’).
This has signficant costs to productivity as meetings erode time available for what professor of computer science Cal Newport refers to as ‘deep work’.
23 hours
MIT Sloan Management Review revealed that executives spend 23 hours per week in meetings12
$37 billion
Unnecessary meetings cost US business an estimated $37 billion per year in salariess13
22%
Employees completed 22% less work before a scheduled meeting than they did when there were no meetings on the horizon. Meeting anticipation hampers output.
Open-plan Offices
In recent years, digital technologies and the collaboration opportunities they promised have prompted many organisations to reconfigure their office design and adopt open plan layouts.
However, the predicted productivity and performance gains that were anticipated did not materialise in most cases. Ironically, technological disruptions have been shown to increase in workplaces with open office designs as there is less face-to-face collaboration.
Open Plan = Door to Disruption
top distractors
Disruptive coworkers (80%) and background office noise (70%) were identified as top overall distractors in the modern workplace14
73% less
Open plan offices result in 73% less face-to-face interaction15
56% increase
Open plan workplace designs result in a 56% increase in email interaction (with employees receiving 20% more emails and were cc’d on 41% more emails)16
67% increase
In open plan spaces the use of instant messages increases by 67%17
Dr Kristy challenges the busyness paradigm and equips employees with simple, science-backed solutions to optimise their productivity and performance in a digital world.
Busyness Culture
We have a new cultural norm: being busy and always working.
‘Busyness’ is often worn as a badge of honour. We take advantage of extra work mobility at the cost of natural breaks. Ubiquitous access to technology has certainly fuelled the ‘busyness’ culture that is rampant in many workplaces today. The digital technologies and flexible work arrangements that were supposed to make workplaces more agile and responsive have resulted in employees feeling perpetually busy.
Busy Doing Nothing
26%
of work is completed outside ‘regular’ working hours18
40%
of employees use their computers after 10pm19
53%
of employees work over the weekend20
52%
of employees work outside designated work hours21
54%
of employees work even when sick22
Dr Kristy arms corporations with essential understandings and strategies to promote mental wellbeing in a digital landscape.
Compromised Mental Wellbeing
Our current 24/7 work environment - always connected, always ‘on’ - is contributing to employee overwhelm. The ubiquitous adoption of mobile technologies ensures a growing overlap between employees’ work and personal lives. Coupled with increased use of social media, many employees’ mental health is compromised because of their technology behaviours.
Mental Wellness Check
no breaks
Many employees no longer have a psychological ‘break’ from work because digital devices now permeate their lives
blurred boundaries
Boundaries between work and personal lives have become blurred, resulting in work seeping into employees’ personal lives
workplace stress
A 2014 Deloitte study found that the digitisation of the workplace consumes staff, leaving them feeling stressed and unable to deal with the psycho-social risks that intensive technology brings23
burnout
In 2019 the World Health Organisation (WHO) listed ‘burnout’ as an occupational phenomenon undermining individual work performance and suggested that many employees are suffering from ‘plugged in burnout’
social comparison
Personal social media habits can also contribute to social comparison. Research has shown a link between social media and depression24
30 minutes/day
A 2018 study found that participants who limited their social media use to 30 minutes/day reported reduced depression and loneliness25
Dr Kristy Goodwin shares the current research on the physical health costs facing employees working in digital environments. She equips them with proven skills and strategies to mitigate risks to their health and wellbeing... without suggesting digital abstinence.
Impaired Physical Health
Unhealthy digital behaviours are posing significant risks to employees’ physical health. Technology habits are compromising both the quality and quantity of sleep which has direct and substantial costs on employees’ wellbeing and performance. Increased rates of myopia, concerns of noise-induced hearing loss, increased sedentary behaviours and incorrect ergonomics are some of the concerning consequences of digital habits that are impairing employee health.
And if we haven’t met yet...
Dr Kristy Goodwin is one of Australia’s leading digital health, wellbeing and productivity experts. She is regularly called upon by national media outlets for her opinion and invited to speak to a diverse range of organisations and businesses (both big and small) around the country. Dr Kristy is a confident, compelling and highly relatable presenter who provides practical and realistic solutions to deal with digital dilemmas in your workplace.
Want to know how Kristy can help your employees thrive in the digital world? Kristy is a speaker and consultant working with both big and small organisations to help their staff with digital wellbeing and productivity strategies.
Dr Kristy has worked with some of the biggest corporations in Australia:
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