The balanced communications diet for business: Principles for working smarter, not harder in a connected world

The problem of workus interruptus

Did you know that during an average working day we are allegedly interrupted once every three minutes (Mark et al., 2008) ... oh, hang on my phone just beeped ... now, where was I?

With agile and flexible working we may not be tethered to our offices or desks anymore, but the devices we have on us constantly have blurred the boundaries between our work life and the rest of our life. We have the pressure of responding to a multitude of beeps and buzzes whether we are in the boardroom, on the beach or in the bathroom. Communication is essential for healthy life and good business decisions, but being overwhelmed by communication is not. Just like food is essential for survival, too much of it can be bad for us.

Don’t get me wrong, these technologies have made our working lives better in many ways. For a start, they put us in control of where, when and how we work. They are the foundation for flexible, agile and home working. They have changed the ways that we communicate and collaborate forever. The challenge isn’t connection anymore; it is disconnection.

It may be easier to abstain from technology use outside the workplace but, when we often carry our offices around with us in our back pockets, disconnection can be challenging. It is more difficult than ever to define when we are working, and when we are not. This “always on” way of life can cause “techno-stress” — i.e. “stress caused by an inability to cope with the demands of organisational technology usage” (Tarafdar et al., 2010). To help combat this, we developed a set of simple principles — a “balanced communications diet for business” — to help us to become healthier and more productive in work.

When are we most productive?

“Productivity” is often defined in manufacturing terms as “the ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it” (Hill, 1993). This is a simple concept when applied to a factory production line but, particularly when

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applied to knowledge work, it becomes more problematic. The only tangible input is the number of hours worked. Output is less easy to define. If people equate a clear email inbox, or constant availability on instant messenger, with productivity then that is probably what employees do all day. Is this really “productive work”?

In an attempt to understand productivity, BT and Cambridge University conducted a set of employee interviews (Mieczakowski et al., 2011). There were a wide variety of answers to the question “Where, when and why are you most productive at work?"

• • “I find I get a full day of work done between 6:00 and 9:30 in the morning. For my sanity as well, knowing I can get at least two productive hours of work in before breakfast, makes a huge difference to my day.”
• • “In the evening, hands down. Less interruptions and my natural time clock is at its peak then.”
• • “For ideas — it’s before 9.30 am. For acting on those ideas, 10 am to 3 pm.”
• • “I need peace and quiet — interruptions just jumble my brain up and I get nothing done."
• • “On a plane — it’s the only safe haven now from calls and emails. Sadly, even that’s changing now!"
• • “I do all my thinking in the car — I have an hour’s commute — once I get to the office it’s all go, go, go! Do I want to work from home? No, I’d lose all that thinking time!”
• • “I can tell you where I'm NOT productive — being tugged in all different places sitting in a ‘team’ set-up office with no privacy or physical harriers between myself and others."

The general theme that emerges from these answers — aside from “everyone is different” — is that people regard themselves as most productive when they are free of interruption. This is often outside the office and the traditional 9-to-5 day. The problem is frequently that we can’t get through the work for talking about the work. However, if you rephrase this question and ask people what motivates them about work over and above the money that they earn, they say that they “like the people that they work with". These people, one assumes, are also generally the source of many of these interruptions!

A significant amount of research supports the idea that having time to think and reflect each day does a great deal for well-being, and constant interruptions can counter this (Mieczakowski et al., 2011; Tams et al., 2018; Galluch et al., 2015). This is the time that we seem to value, if the answers to these questions are to be believed. People who are always “plugged-in” often don’t get this vital mental downtime. We all seem to recognise that we need peace and quiet sometimes to just think. But finding the time to do this can be easier said than done. We always seem to put a higher value on action rather than inaction. The value of reflection is underrated because business is so concerned with action and activity — things that are easy to measure — rather than thinking about action, which looks too much like staring into space.

This “cult of busyness” also means that we tend to get tugged in all directions during our working day. We can feel out of control. People are most likely to become enthusiastic about what they are doing when they are free to make decisions about the way that they do it. Classic psychology (Karasek & Theorell, 1990) tells us that high levels of demand and low levels of perceived control results in stress, burnout and emotional exhaustion.

Control is easier on some communication devices than others. It’s easy to find the off switch on a laptop; but less so on a smart phone. Because we often can’t be seen at our desks, or in the office anymore, there can be a pressure to be always on. Control can take other forms, though. Minimising distractions and interruptions could be one way of both taking control and becoming more productive.