The Necessity of Digital Disconnect to Increase Productivity
An increasingly necessary digital detox that has employers on edge
If we search for “productivity” on Google, nothing more than 503 million entries appear. The figure is such because it is a key concept for all companies and every possible tool is sought to increase it. Today I will explain why digital disconnect, although a priori it seems contradictory, is one of them.
Being able to “improve the relationship between what is produced and the means employed, such as labor, materials or energy”, is a fundamental competitive advantage. Hence, when most of the employees had to work from home after the pandemic began, many companies feared that productivity would decline.
Anyone would come up with a simple recipe to increase productivity: work more hours at the same cost. So we would do more with the same tools, wouldn’t we? But the reality is rather the other way around: when you work longer than you should, you block and stop thinking clearly.
“Remote work isn’t a privilege or a special accommodation. It’s a way of working, and that’s a strong statement for some people. It shouldn’t be a question of rewarding top performers with the ability to work remotely.” — Nickie Bellington, Atlassian
Workers’ health worries On the other hand, there is growing concern among businesses to care for the health of their workers. It is significant how difficult it is to find a leader with remarkable overweight because he conveys the impression that, if he is not able to take care of himself, he will not be able to do so from the company either.
Digital disconnect This employee-care paradigm must include safeguarding them from stress and anxiety, which is one of the main causes of disemployment. If an organization thinks that the most important thing is its employees, it can’t risk someone ending up needing a retirement for something that can be avoided. For this reason, companies understand the right to digital disconnect and encourage measures to enhance respect for rest time.
In this line, applications like Microsoft Viva, an employee experience platform, are emerging that helps digital disconnect by providing workers with personalized information to reserve time for periods of concentration, rest, or training. Business owners can view the team’s work trends, not individually, to set limits on the agendas or to differentiate and mark what is a priority. The role of these team managers is very important because it is proven that the work hours of the team are parallel, so when the boss does overtime he draws others to do the same. He’s a key figure in the employee experience.
Digital detox As a result of the pandemic and the reduction of physical contact, our dependence on any kind of screen that puts us in contact with others has increased. That dependence, called nomophobia, leads corporations themselves to seek ways to curb it. This shows the time of use of the devices or sets limits of activity time in some applications as ways of imposing an increasingly necessary “digital detox”.
Remote work during the pandemic has increased the feeling of exhaustion With the rise of remote work, it is even more necessary if there is a good organizational structure, including certain moments of digital disconnect. Working from home without distractions takes us to spend long hours in front of the computer almost without noticing. Now no one misses the traffic jams to go to the office, but those minutes of travel between one meeting room and another. We move from one video meeting to the next in just a few seconds, and you miss that disconnect that helps clear us up and allows us to change the chip to focus on the next topic.
Productivity doesn’t improve by working more hours Everyone likes to get fruits from their work, and we tend to think that the more we work, the better they will be. Working many hours is often considered a positive quality and a sign of commitment to the company. But this is not always the case. It often hides other grassroots problems, such as disorganization, an excess of emergency on the part of the organization, or overdrive in trying to push through an idea doomed to failure beforehand.
The bottom line
The reality is that on many occasions the most productive thing is to stand up and think. Technology, which is largely to blame for our sense of ageism at having to be permanently connected, also offers us alternatives to escape it. And it’s critical to do that to maintain good results.
“It’s a misconception that remote workers are lazy or not as productive or don’t get as much done. Trust is so important. If you have relationship mistrust and you require your team to be in front of you so you can stare over their shoulders and look at their computer screens, they’re also not going to operate with a level of trust. In a remote environment, you have that trust and people are generally getting more work done. They’re more productive and are able to succeed.” — Greg Caplan, Remote Year