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Email checking leads to job stress

Tuesday August 14, 2007
CityNews.ca Staff

The little icon appears at the bottom of your computer as you stare at your screen. It's such a small thing, you'd think you should be able to ignore it. But you just can't. So you stop what you're doing and attend to it, losing your train of thought and interrupting yourself in the middle of a busy business day. And you do it over and over and over again.

That, in a nutshell, is why people are stressing themselves out over something that was originally designed to make their lives easier: email. According to a new study out of Glasgow and Paisley Universities in Scotland, electronic letters are causing more stress for more workers than ever before. The problem isn't the email itself. It's the psychological need to see what someone has sent you - and that inevitable feeling that you have to reply to it right away. The constant interruptions make it impossible to concentrate on your real work, and leave many feeling frustrated that they just don't seem to have the time to get anything accomplished.

Researchers installed monitoring equipment on about 200 office computers and asked workers how often they checked their email. Some said they looked at their correspondence once an hour while others admitted it was more like every 15 minutes. But the checking software showed that nearly all of them accessed their inbox far more often that that, creating a stress level that most weren't even aware they had.

And the feeling of needing to answer it all immediately made things even worse. The study showed women were more likely to feel the intense pressure than men, and those involved in cerebral or creative activities got more stressed out than workers whose jobs were more menial.

So what's the answer? The study authors recommend workers train themselves to realize that not every email is urgent and not every one has to be answered immediately. And companies should create policies making it clear that the electronic emissions sent out to employees don't always require constant attention. Treat them like a phone call, they argue - and get back to them when it's convenient. And set aside a specified amount of work time every day to deal with your email volume, putting you back in control of a problem that for many will otherwise just keep getting worse.