How email can threaten your career

Do you send work emails from bed at night or while on vacation? Is your smartphone glued to your hand during a teeth cleaning or haircut? If you've answered yes to any of these questions, keep reading.

Two psychology researchers at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb say this behavior may be symptomatic of a new condition they call "telepressure," according to Forbes. Telepressure is the feeling of needing to respond to electronic communication, including emails, texts and voicemails, as quickly as possible to ensure you appear responsive and connected.

Larissa Barber, a psychology professor at NIU and lead author of a new study on telepressure said, "Employees pick up on both subtle and not-so-subtle cues in the work environment that imply that fast response times are needed to be perceived as productive workers. This may leave employees feeling like they technically have the option of not being continuously accessible, but that unplugging — even for short periods of time — may be damaging to their careers."

As it turns out, this attitude can eventually contribute to reduced quality of performance and even serious health issues. According to Forbes, employees and managers alike who feel subject to a lot of telepressure are more likely to burn out, lose focus and even experience health-related absenteeism. Habits that may have initially formed from a strong work ethic may ultimately be what damages careers.

In one survey sited by Forbes, 81 percent of workers have checked work email on a weekend and a third of workers respond to emails at work within 15 minutes. Another survey found 28 percent of employees' days are spent reading and replying to emails. Communication is an essential part of almost any job, but what happens when it becomes too much to handle?

According to a Human Solutions study, 52 percent of people who reported feeling stressed out at work said this stress has caused them physical health problems and 42 percent reported suffering from mental health problems. More than half of employees surveyed in the study, 56 percent, said they thought about quitting their job because of the stress they experience, and 75 percent of employees said the quality of their personal or family life suffered because of stress experienced at work. Notably, 64 percent of respondents reported the quality of their work suffered because of stress experienced at work.

Within the healthcare industry, much attention is paid to rates of physician burnout. Among other factors, administrative duties and patient overload contribute to high levels of physician burnout, but a satisfaction survey administered at the Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine annual conference in San Diego found that 57 percent of clinicians said they feel more attached to their computer than their patients on "most days."

Burnout is present on the executive level, too.

Ora Pescovitz, MD, former CEO of Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan Health System and executive vice president of medical affairs of the university, announced her resignation as the system's leader in March. At the Becker's Hospital Review CEO and CFO roundtable earlier this month, Dr. Pescovitz discussed the importance of being happy at work and maintaining a life outside of it.

"I don't think there is such a thing as work life balance, because I only think you get one life. But I will say that I do think it's very important to have a life outside of your work; I do believe all successful people are happy people."

Dr. Pescovitz then spelled out her own personal rule of thumb for measuring work-life happiness. "I'll give you my principle of my four Ps for what should happen if you're an executive and you feel at some point in your life that you're not happy. If you're not content, that's good because it pushes you to drive harder, but you must be happy. So when you're not happy, what should you do? You should push really hard to change the circumstances that make you not happy. But if that doesn't work and you don't succeed in changing the circumstances, then you should try to put up with it, which means you should change yourself. And if that doesn't work, then you've got to go to the third P, which means you need to pull out. And regardless, you need to play."

If your work life is consuming your at home, weekend and vacation lives, there is a problem. While it might seem like taking a break or shutting off the computer will set you behind the rest, in the long run, it's in employees' and leaders' best interest to maintain a healthy amount of free-time outside of the job.

While everyone doesn't have the time or flexibility to start practicing yoga every morning, there are things employees and managers can do to reduce stress and prevent burnout.

According to Forbes, NIU's Professor Barber outlined a few suggestions for employees to address the telepressure that could be contributing to stress.

  • Turn off sound and visual notifications on personal devices so you don't feel compelled to open and respond to every message.
  • Set specific times of day when you check email, and stick to them. Let coworkers and others in communication know when you routinely check and respond to emails.
  • If it's possible, establish a 'no interruption time' to completely disconnect, including shutting down all communication devices. Professor Barber suggests doing this for an hour in the work day when you're cognitively at your best to focus on more difficult tasks.

Although not always deliberately, employers often contribute to the telepressure employees feel by implying they want and expect employees to always be responsive. To remedy this issue, Professor Barber suggests:

  • Establish expectations and rules for email etiquette in the workplace, such as responding to all emails within 48 hours during business hours.
  • Explicitly convey when a response to an email is expected.
  • Only flag truly urgent emails as "urgent."

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