Digital technology is part of our daily lives. Computers, smartphones and connected objects are all part of our daily lives. Between emails, alerts, notifications and digital content, your employees are confronted with constant messages. Digital technology remains the most powerful tool in the service of your performance and communication... as long as you avoid the pitfalls of over-solicitation, which is detrimental to concentration and productivity!
Hyper-solicitation increasingly present in the workplace
We live in an economy of attention, and brands are well aware of this. In a society where supply is abundant, and consumers are constantly solicited by digital content, attention and time are becoming scarce resources that need to be captured before competitors do.
Your employees' attention is also becoming a coveted resource in the workplace. Helping them to better manage the digital solicitations they receive on a daily basis is as much a question of well-being at work as it is of efficiency.
Digital hypersollicitation in the workplace
Employees exposed to an incessant flow of information, communications and digital solicitations, mainly through information and communication technologies (ICT), can quickly suffer from digital hypersollicitation.
These solicitations are directly linked to professional activity. Phone calls, emails, instant messaging messages, notifications, reminders of deadlines, meetings and videoconferences all add up, and quickly become invasive.
In addition to these professional demands, there are also personal demands. An employee may be affected by calls from friends and family, private instant messages, mobile notifications from applications, social networks...
A constant flow of communications at the expense of productivity
Digital tools have facilitated communications between team members, but also between employees and company customers. Your employees are literally swamped by a large number of messages, requests and notifications, with direct consequences for their performance at work.
And yet, each new solicitation can interrupt a task in progress. The result is a loss of concentration, which has a direct impact on productivity and work quality. A job normally completed in two hours can quickly require one or two extra hours if there are repeated interruptions.
Time management is also affected by digital hypersollicitation. Frequent requests disrupt your employees' schedules, and can disrupt their management of priorities. Tasks that are not really urgent can delay the delivery of long-scheduled, more important assignments.
The multiplication of channels can also lead to a loss of information. Messages cross paths, and versions of documents or queries intermingle, with direct consequences for quality and productivity.
Over-solicitation, a source of stress and discomfort
Digital hypersollicitation is detrimental to the well-being of your employees.
This information overload can be a source of stress and anxiety. Your employees feel overwhelmed by requests, and perceive them as nuisances. They can no longer sort out the really important requests from those that can be dealt with later, or even ignored.
Due to the constant accessibility of digital devices and applications, some managers expect employees to be available and responsive at all times, including outside working hours. It becomes difficult to disconnect from work, which can lead to an imbalance between professional and personal life.
The challenges of digital solicitation in the age of telecommuting
Teleworking is revolutionizing the way companies are organized, and hybrid management is being adopted by a growing number of companies.
Yet remote working can exacerbate digital hypersollicitation. Unable to demonstrate their involvement by being present on the company premises, some telecommuting employees may have to be more responsive to requests from colleagues, managers or customers. The result? Increased stress, and a blurring of the boundary between private and professional life.
Meeting the challenges of digital hypersollicitation in the workplace
Digital overstretch in the workplace doesn't have to be inevitable. A proactive approach combining organizational policies, management practices and team awareness will enable you to create a positive dynamic around digital tools.
Promoting the right to disconnect
Since January 1, 2017, the right to disconnect has entered labor law (article 55 of law no. 2016-1088 of August 8, 2016). Collective bargaining should be the preferred lever for establishing rules of good conduct that correspond to employees' needs, and are tailored to your company. Failing an agreement, the employer must implement this right by drafting a charter listing good practices, awareness-raising and training actions undertaken.
Do you apply a right to disconnect within your company? You could, for example, specify that your employees are not required to reply to e-mails outside office hours, including your telecommuting staff. You can also set aside days or periods of the day without e-mail, or deploy technical measures such as deactivating notifications outside working hours.
Limit and prioritize information channels
Digital over-solicitation is partly due to the multiplication of channels. You can limit information channels to avoid all-out solicitation, and assign a role to each tool. Here are a few examples of simple, easy-to-adopt measures:
- Assignment requests always go through a project management tool such as Monday, Trello, Jira or Asana ;
- A deadline is always associated with a project, to help prioritize tasks and manage everyone's time;
- Mails are mainly used for exchanges with customers, suppliers and partners;
- More informal exchanges, such as a request for advice, take place via instant messaging;
- Only parties involved in a project are copied on an email, to avoid inbox saturation;
- Resources and documents are centralized on the intranet or in the company cloud, ideally with remote access and modification rights, to avoid the need to go back and forth;
- etc.
You can organize a consultation with managers or the entire workforce to gather everyone's opinions and ideas.
Training and raising awareness with the right communication tools
You can mobilize the internal communication tools at your disposal to make your employees aware of digital hypersollicitation, and to spread best practices:
- Communicate on the right to disconnect and the measures adopted at company level;
- Explain information channels, processes and usage policies within the company;
- Facilitate feedback from teams and managers, in order to adjust strategies to combat digital hypersollicitation.
Use digital signage to communicate with your teams
With digital signage, you can display digital content on one or more screens: videos, PowerPoint-type presentations, graphs with real-time data, static images, and more. Content is managed from a single interface, and the content on each screen can be customized. Content can also be viewed on the screens of telecommuting employees.
Digital signage offers a powerful solution for communicating about the challenges of digital hypersollicitation in the workplace, with a non-intrusive, high-impact approach. You can leverage Cenareo technology to give visibility to key metrics or best practices: "An e-mail after 6:00 pm? I'll wait until the next day to reply! You can also broadcast awareness-raising messages or information about upcoming training sessions on time management. Are you interested in using digital signage to boost your internal communications, and would you like to discover all the advantages of the Cenareo solution? Let's take a look together!
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