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Are you an addict? I think some of us are…
March 15th, 2012 Adil Tahiri Posted in Wellbeing @ Work, Zero Email |
Just to clarify, I am talking email here! The phenomenon was initially known in the industry as “crackberry” but I think “icrack” is the better term now that Apple devices are more prevalent.
Problematic Internet use, or addiction, is characterized by excessive or poorly controlled preoccupations, urges or behaviours regarding Internet use that lead to impairment or distress (Weinstein et al., 2010). Email has been identified as one of three subtypes of Internet addiction which include excessive gaming and sexual preoccupations (cybersex).
While there has been some progress in terms of diagnosis using questionnaires such as the Young’s Internet Addiction Scale, the phenomenon remains clouded by shame, downplaying the issue or complete denial by those affected. In addition, unlike other addictive disorders such as substance and alcohol abuse, Internet addiction is relatively new so research remains in its infancy including clinical trials. Nevertheless a number of academic surveys took place over the last few years and the prevalence rate of Internet addiction varies widely depending on survey methods used and the demographics of surveyed population. In summary, 1.5% to 8.2% of Internet users are considered addicts (Petersen et al., 2009) and these figures can reach 20% in the Far East amongst the younger generation.
Similarly in the workplace, 60% of employees spend less than 2 waking hours a day completely disconnected from email according to a poll of 1200 employees carried out by the energy project.
Observing a number of people (including myself) over the last 2 weeks has led to the following simple questions that may help us reconsider our interaction with mobile devices, particularly corporate push email systems:
- Have you ever sat in a meeting where you or others were continuously responding to email only to be embarrassed later on when asked to contribute?
- Have you ever been on holidays where you ignored your kids to respond to emails?
- Have you ever tried to read your email in the car (illegal) or even in the bathroom (not illegal but it should be!)?
- Have you ever tried to turn your phone on before reaching the airport terminal?
- How long does it take you before you reach out to your mobile device when you hear the sound of new incoming emails?
- Which comes first breakfast or email?
Finally, I realised that push email is a bigger problem than I initially thought when I accused a colleague of mine of being an addict which he vehemently denied while pressing the send button on his iphone for the fifth time during the first hour of our evening meal. So we may all deny it, but the truth is that some of us are email addicts albeit with varying degrees.
From a CIO perspective, there is a need to understand whether organisations have a duty to protect their employees from Email addition and whether they are liable when such addiction may be linked to work. While many would argue that access to email after hours for example is completely voluntary, there is no denying the fact that organisations encourage such addictive behaviour by providing push email services 24x7x365.
Arguably, educating the workforce and email activity monitoring will be key in the medium to long term to anticipate and prevent such behaviour. In the short term however, CIOs should consider taking more concrete actions.
To evaluate potential options, keep it simple meaning steps that do not impact “real” productivity while improving the wellbeing of the workforce should be given priority. So next time you are reviewing your email strategy/policy, please give some thought to the following:
- Limit push email to working hours and by working hours I mean “08:00-18:00”.
- Consider introducing email credits for internal emails so employees can start thinking carefully about their email habits.
- Consider turning off push email for individuals automatically when they configure their out of office vacation or when they book their holidays in internal systems.
Taking the above steps should contribute to the wellbeing of the workforce and force your employees to gradually change their email behaviour. In many instances, these small steps will hardly impact productivity because at the end of the day, if it is very urgent I can guarantee you that you will receive a phone call!
Adil Tahiri
Adil Tahiri is a technology strategy director within the Chief Technology Office and also a member of Atos scientific community. His current role involves collaborating with a number of colleagues globally, partners and customers to identify and exploit emerging and disruptive technologies for the benefits of Atos customers. He has been in the IT industry for 15 years and has led the technical delivery of a number of large and complex IT transformation programmes cross different industries. He has particular focus on data centre networking, server technologies, unified communication & collaboration, end-user computing and virtualisation/cloud technologies. Prior to becoming part of the CTO, Adil has held a number of senior technical consulting positions at KPMG, Schlumberger, Fujitsu Services and Atos Origin.
Interesting article – In talking with clients about the move to zero email one of the reasons for peoples addiction is anxiety! Primarily the anxiety that they are missing a task sent via email. Which if they’re working within an organisation past a certain size (especially with a matrix structure) they may not be expecting..know anything about!! All of the suggestions above are an excellent starter set to reduce our dependency but should be delivered within an overall cultural change programme that teaches us all how to manage and delegate tasks effectively.
I’m not an addict for sure …
Nope, I am not an addict. No time to explain why, plane is taking off…
—————————-
sent from my mobile
So, let’s check that :
1.Have you ever sat in a meeting where you or others were continuously responding to email only to be embarrassed later on when asked to contribute?
=> Yes of course
2.Have you ever been on holidays where you ignored your kids to respond to emails?
=> No
3.Have you ever tried to read your email in the car (illegal) or even in the bathroom (not illegal but it should be!)?
=> In the car, during traffic jam
4.Have you ever tried to turn your phone on before reaching the airport terminal?
==> No
5.How long does it take you before you reach out to your mobile device when you hear the sound of new incoming emails?
==> No sound, no pop up. So it could take hours !
6.Which comes first breakfast or email?
==> Hey man, I’m french so Breakfast first !!!
I can say that I’m not an addict at all !!!
So, conclusion is that mobilty is a great advantage for mobile workers like us, and help to manage our time. But the bad point is that every one expects that we will answer emails in-a-second … and that’s not the way email should be used.
To use emails in the best way, we need to educate people with “how-to”, and remember them that phone still exist !
Ooh … new email coming, need to leave …
CIO’s should spend more time thinking about how to increase collaboration rather than reduce email.
its not the medium that is important … its the message
I remember 15 years ago when my university prof told me that India and China will push Germany from the top places of econonmy rankings. As well as any other European country. Because our productivity fails to catch up.
Now here is the good news: They did not. And we had huge productivity gains during the last 10 years. Partially because wages did not raise as much as inflation (=net loss) and I think partially because jobs are not 9am-5pm any longer but they entered our private lifes incl. this email phenomenon. But also telcos during holidays and increasingly shorter paid leaves have increased productivity.
All I want to say is that it is truly worth and important to address this email addiction thing on a personal level and find ways to compensate for a better work-life-balance.
But I believe it even has a socio-economic dimension that is worth being considered.
This is a real problem, we are drowning in email. It’s not healthy and it’s not productive. I like some of the suggestions to limit email to working hours but know that as soon as such a system is implemented I’ll get an email to my personal account that starts out “I know this is your personal email address but…”, limits and barriers to information flow will always be breached.
Count me in – ou could add to he checklist doing email even before going down for breakfast! Good job my alacohol and gambling addictions are not as bad
I’m not an addict. No, really.
For those that didn’t spot it, this is a reference to the 1995 film Hackers!
http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=402
Thought provoking stuff and strikes very much to the heart of one of the biggest challenges facing any business – a balance between availability and the well being of the employee.
I would readily admit to having feelings of guiIt in the past if I didn’t scan my blackberry over the course of an evening or even a weekend (god forbid!!) but nowadays I take the view that down time from work is an essential component in any successful career – and life for that matter.
It does appear that hope is out there in some quarters – witness VW’s well publicised initiative to restrict blackberry email forwarding for some employees out of hours. More employers need to realise that to encourage its employees to have proper out-of-hours down time is a recipe for success and productivity come the working hour.
I am that addict, i keep my BB by my bed and have been known to check it at the oddest of times for no reason at all – the very definition of a dependency.
But I also know that email is often a poor communication means as the cc function encourages grandstanding and ill thought out responses. At least with Lync it is point to point and often leads to an immediate resolution – far more akin to natural human conversation but with benefit of user been able to set status and to determine if wish to receive messages or not.
A new email culture is needed and I do beleive companies have a role to foster that and many of your suggestions are sensible but how to go cold turkey and make that adjustment….
A nice tie in to the “zero email” philosophy, which behind the zeitgeist capturing headlines has some real validity. Some of the suggestions here would be a very good first step for organisations to take if they really are serious about removing reliance on email.
Thought provoking blog Adil… I am an addict and seek therapy. It’s not just email though. Its information, whether that’s twitter, OCS, facebook… I’d add that it’s not healthy if one of the first things you do in the morning is to check what updates came in overnight (within the first 15 minutes of waking up…). Interestingly I’m in the US this week and the timezone means that the first few hours of the day have been email intensive, but the afternoons have been very productive, as Europe gradually winds down and then sleeps…
Interesting stuff, I am that person who turns on their phone before the airport terminal and relishes the warm glow as the mail headers download.
Email should be store and forward, however response expectation is imdediate in my experience which doesn’t help.
I think email and sms feed the human desire to feel wanted, I do sometimes wonder if sociopaths have the same problem…