British report describes increasing incidents of e-mail stress

William Atkins
Tuesday, 14 August 2007 19:38

Science - Health

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According to the Times Online article “E-mail stress keeps workers on edge of inbox”, computer scientist Karen Renaud, at Glasgow University, and psychologist Judith Ramsay and statistician Mario Hair, both at Paisley University, surveyed 177 employees who were mostly involved in creative type jobs—those involving long periods of concentration.
 

They found that these employees underestimate the amount of time they spend with emails. Actual results from the study report that over 33% of the surveyed workers look in the inbox every fifteen minutes and 64% look inside more than once an hour.

The researchers monitored the workers with computer tracking software and found that some workers were looking at emails thirty to forty times an hour. Many felt the need to answer the emails as quickly as possible and others felt pressure from the sheer number of emails that appear each work day. Women felt more pressured than men, overall, to respond to emails immediately. People in such creative jobs as academics, writers, journalists, and architects were found to be most negatively affected.

Renaud and Ramsay state “E-mail has become an indispensable tool in business. However, there is evidence that e-mail can exert a powerful hold over its users and that many computer users experience stress as a result of e-mail-related pressure.”  [Times Online] They call this action “e-mail stress” because of the enormous amounts of messages that appear in computer inboxes and the large amount of time and effort needed to deal with emails.

The actions to monitor, answer, delete, and other such activities involving email messages, the study finds, leave surveyed workers tired and frustrated, with feeling of being unproductive at work. Dealing with emails also gives workers the uneasy sense of being interrupted with their regular job activities. Trying to meet deadlines and other necessary activities within the workday, only adds to the frustration of having to deal with emails.

The researchers recommend that emails should not be considered as important as telephone calls. In addition, emails should not be constantly monitored—instead predetermined periods of time should be reserved each day to deal with emails in order not to interrupt regular work.