Awareness

Understand how you are using technology when you are working. Awareness of use is the key to achieving balance and well-being when using communications technology, largely because most people appear to be unaware just how much they use it and how habitual their use is. Try recording the ways in which you are using technology at work for a few days. Some apps will automatically record screen time for you to save you having to think about it. You can then try to aim for a more ideal level, whatever you define that level to be.

Education

This is really around establishing guidelines and cultural norms around acceptable use of communication channels. Establishing conventions such as “no email after 5.30 pm”, asking “is this the right channel for this message” and allowing individuals to broadcast their communication preferences are all part of the process of educating the workforce.

Many organisations are establishing organisational communication etiquette and even providing training courses on the appropriate use of communication and clear language within their business. Even simple things like establishing rules on when, or when not, to use “reply to all” in emailmessages or how to construct meaningful subject lines can make a huge difference. Behaviours often come from the top, so it is critical for leaders to display appropriate communication behaviours themselves (Schwartz & Porath, 2014). They shouldn’t bombard their people with email at all times of the day and night, micro-manage their employees on instant messenger, or schedule meetings at anti-social hours (particularly challenging when global virtual teams are involved as it’s always five o’clock somewhere).

Balance

As with everything else, moderation is key. Moderation of communications technology, whether it is by location, rules or something else, is ultimately a way to achieve a certain sense of balance. Self-control plays a critical part in this. If we want to become more productive and lessen the potential negative impact of technology, we need to make a conscious effort to control how we use it. The larger problem is that we really are not aware of when we are in control of technology and when technology is in control of us.

There is no perfect way to exert self-control. We are better at controlling ourselves in certain situations than others. People who are more easily distracted by technology must, first, become aware of it before they can start to control their behaviour.

However, behavioural economists will tell you that self-control may be less straightforward than we may think (Ariely & Wertenbroch, 2002). What looks like exquisite self-control can actually just be an instance of rule-following. For example, if someone is told that they must check their email only twice a day and then does so, they are not exhibiting traditional self-control, but are simply following a rule. Self-control has to do with being aware of the potential long-term consequences of an action and acting accordingly, even when the short-term consequences would be pleasurable. Rule-following only requires us to do what we are told. While self-control will likely play a big role in how much modern technology affects any one individual, it is important to keep in mind how self-control is characterised and how it differs between individuals.

Many of the concerns about what communications technology is doing to us are about the degree to which it stops us talking to each other in a traditional way. Emailing or messaging the person sitting opposite us makes no sense and yet we often do exactly that. This could be due to lack of privacy in the office space we are in (Bernstein & Turban, 2018), or simply that we can establish an audit trail of the conversation.

Establishing a balance around communications use at work is vital. Anyone who has sat through a conference doing their emails only to suddenly realise they have no concept of what has actually happened in the real world needs to ask themselves why they were at that event. This is sometimes called “continuous partial attention” (Hemp, 2009). Establishing boundaries for acceptable use of communications technologies is important. In meetings,

The balanced communications diet for business 121 both face-to-face and virtual, switching everything off should be acceptable behaviour.

However, the point that balance is achieved is probably unique to each and every one of us. Some people feel lost without their smartphones, while others relish time out. Regardless of your preference, there is evidence that having at least some technology down time is beneficial to well-being (Taraf-dar et ah, 2010; Thotnee et al., 2011; Fitz et al., 2019). Taking a tech break can also reduce feelings of dependence on technology (Carolus et al., 2018).