Productivity, Attention and Organisational Impact

Faced with greater challenges to manage and organise available information, increased workload demands and higher role expectations, employee stress levels have been on the increase (Schwarzmüller et al., 2018).  

Technology use for work purposes during private time means that employees are less likely to detach psychologically from work, relax and recover from the effort they put in during the working day.  

Lower recovery levels lowers productivity during the workday and increases workplace telepressure (Hu et al., 2019).

Workplace telepressure and the subsequent use of workplace technology within a private domain, leads to a continuous lack of recovery from work stressors and lower sleep quality over time, which has the potential to lead to burnout in the long-run (Derks et al., 2015; Hu et al., 2019).  

Lack of recovery from work can also lead to poor job performance, increased levels of sickness and health related absenteeism (Barber & Santuzzi, 2015; Hakanen & Bakker, 2017).  

It can also lead to presenteeism, which involves workers being physically present in the organisation, but being either physically or mentally unwell and can be a direct consequence of workplace burnout (Wayne et al., 2019).  

Workers need restorative sleep in order to reduce work fatigue and engage in optimal cognitive functioning during the working day (Barber & Santuzzi, 2015).  

In the UK in 2013, the cost of stress, anxiety and depression-related presenteeism was estimated to be £737 per employee per year (Hassard et al., 2014).  

NHS Scotland predicts that between a third and two thirds of absenteeism from work is stress related (Hassard et al., 2014).  

An official government survey found that one in three absences at work were stress and anxiety related (Hope, 2013).  

These organisational impacts were evident before the mandatory working from home order that was introduced in March of 2020.