Slack users can’t afford it?
A new survey highlights what many employees have felt for a long time. Disconnecting from work, messages, and emails is unfortunately a thing of the past.
the study The Journal of Applied Psychology, published as another round of severe layoffs across the country, explores the invisible pressures workers feel that prevent them from truly going offline. I’m digging deep.
A quartet of university professors observed around 200 full-time employees for two weeks to see how they managed their time away from work and how burnout reared its ugly head. did.
“The more employees leave work in the evening, the more shame they feel at work the next morning. Paradoxically, the very experience that is supposed to rejuvenate employees can instead make them problematic employees. “It made them feel bad about themselves,” the study authors said. wrote the Wall Street Journal on Sunday..
Adding insult to injury, this shame made employees “more likely to cut corners” by working their 9-to-5 jobs to appear busy and doing more than they actually did.
The researchers also noted that high-pressure environments commonly create tension among employees, resulting in overwhelmingly low productivity.
“The threat of falling behind and potentially damaging their reputations made employees feel they had to ‘speed up’ by any means necessary,” they wrote.
The study authors also accused managers of practicing a philosophy of “do as I say, not as I do.”
You may preach about taking your time for yourself, but sending emails and messages outside of business hours makes your employees feel like it’s a normal part of the business.
“This type of behavior shows that work-life balance and detachment are not true organizational priorities,” the authors write. “Furthermore, if managers do not take time off from work themselves, employees may receive lip service to messages about feelings of isolation.”
The researchers added that “managers who praise and glorify overwork also contribute to the problem.”
Additionally, they realized that company policies offering unlimited paid time off were also not a surefire solution.
Policies like this only add to the pressure on employees to actually use their time and fuel fears of backlash.
“Instead, companies interested in promoting benefits may require employees to take a certain number of vacation days or institute mandatory time off that clearly states that detachment is part of the job. “More targeted policies should be considered,” they shared.
As employees are increasingly encouraged to come to work in person, researchers stress that it’s bosses’ responsibility to make their offices a better place to work, but that employees may also have some influence. There is power.
“You should think twice before sending a late email or replying to a Slack message to avoid accidentally perpetuating an ‘always on’ culture,” they say.
