Date: Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Research claims workers are suffering from e-mail stress

The huge volume of e-mails each worker receives a day is causing immense stress amongst employees, and an almost constant checking of inboxes.

This week researchers from Glasgow and Paisley universities carried out a survey into the affects e-mail has on office workers, and the way it impacts on their daily working schedule. Of those questioned, over a third believed they checked their e-mails every fifteen minutes, and 64% of workers believed they checked their e-mails more than once an hour. When monitors were attached to the computers of those questioned in the survey, many of them were found to check their inboxes upwards of forty times an hour, implying that the stress workers feel under is even greater than they themselves recognise. Workers even confessed to feeling ‘invaded’ by their e-mails, with only 38% of those questioned reporting to feeling able to put off replying to e-mails for a day or two. The pressure to always reply instantaneously to e-mails was also found to be putting workers on edge and causing so-called ‘e-mail stress’. In fact 33% of respondents said they felt stressed by the amount of e-mails they received, and a further 28% said they felt driven to check and reply to them regularly.

The 200 workers questioned predominantly returned negative views of e-mail in their office lives, leading to the team who carried out the research calling for changes to be made. The huge time-taxing activity of e-mail checking means that workers often interrupt what they are doing to check their inboxes, and that they are constantly switching between applications to do so. This means that work is of a lesser standard, and that workers feel frazzled with their attention never fully on one job. Clearly changes must be made to reduce the amount of stress British workers feel under in their day-to-day office lives.

Source: Times Online