Not properly ‘switching off’ and disconnecting from work-related electronic communications can be more than just annoying, it can damage your health, research shows.
Researchers from the University of South Australia surveyed more than 2200 academics and professional staff across 40 Australian universities, and found that employees who responded to work emails and texts out of hours had greater odds of experiencing burnout, psychological distress, and poor physical health.
Researchers found that in 2021:
- 26% of employees felt that they had to respond to work-related texts, calls, and emails from supervisors during their leisure time;
- 57% said that they’d sent work-related digital communications to other colleagues in the evenings;
- 50% reported that they often receive work-related texts, calls and emails from colleagues on the weekend;
- 36% reported that it was the norm to respond immediately to digital communication in their organisation.
UniSA researcher Dr Amy Zadow says that the expectations for employees to be available 24-7 is putting pressure on workers.
“Since COVID, the digitalisation of work has really skyrocketed, blurring work boundaries, and paving the path for people to be contactable at all hours,” Dr Zadow said.
“But being available to work both day and night limits the opportunity for people to recover – doing things such as exercise and catching up with friends and family – and when there is no recovery period you can start to burn out.
“Our research shows that high levels of out-of-hours work digital communication can have a significant impact on your physical and mental wellbeing, affecting work-family relationships, causing psychological distress, and poor physical health.
“Conversely, workers who kept their work boundaries in check experienced less stress and pressure.”
The study found that those who were expected to respond to after-hours work communications on the weekends reported higher levels of psychological distress (56% vs 42%); emotional exhaustion (61% vs 42%); and poor physical health (28% compared to 10%).
UniSA’s Professor Kurt Lushington said that dealing with work-related stress is becoming increasingly important.
“Managing out-of-hours communications can be challenging, but organisations do have the power to discourage ‘work creep’,” Prof Lushington said.
“Setting up policies, practices and procedures to protect psychological health by developing a strong Psychosocial Safety Climate is likely to limit damaging out-of-hours digital communication. And, on a broader scale, this is already being considered in various Enterprise Bargaining Agreements and National Employment Standards.
“The starting place is measuring work demand so that an organisation can mitigate the risk in the first place. Once they do this, they can develop protective actions that can prevent the development or continuations of harmful workplace norms.
“At the end of the workday, everyone should have the right to disconnect.”
Source: University of South Australia
