Companies should ease stress by helping employees work smarter instead of harder, a new report finds, writes Gabrielle Monaghan
When Maurice Pratt entered the business world 30 years ago, the only means of instant communication was the telephone. The executive, now head of drinks company C&C Group, remembers how he had to wait up to a year for a phone line when he set up businesses in some parts of Ireland.
Nowadays, the opposite is true. Advances in technology and communications have led to a 24/7 work culture that is creating an information overload.
This is forcing managers and employees alike to spend more time trawling through information that is of no value or interest to them and compelling executives to make decisions more rapidly, a new report has found.
"Information is massively important but if you are constantly bombarded by more information than you need, you are going to be making fewer high-quality decisions," Pratt says in the report.
The surge of information flowing through the "knowledge economy" is creating a whole new range of challenges for Irish organisations, according to the paper, entitled The New World of Work. The volume of e-mail received by businesses alone has risen 47 per cent in the past 12 months. "To cover themselves, workers are copying e-mails to 10 or more people even if they are not relevant to them and wasting people's time," says Dr Colette Darcy, lecturer in human resource management at the National College of Ireland and author of The New World of Work. "Organisations need to stamp this out."
While technological advances have allowed employees greater control and discretion over when and where they work, it also means that workers have nowhere to hide.
They are under increasing pressure to respond to e-mails and phone calls from colleagues and customers late at night, at weekends and on holiday, according to Darcy.
Almost half of workers surveyed by Reuters said they felt they were often unable to handle the volume of information they received and one-third reported working late or taking work home on a regular basis as a result of having to deal with vast amounts of information.
"Technology has removed the traditional barriers that prevented people from contacting you outside working hours," says Darcy. "With snail mail you would have waited a week for a response but now we have higher expectations. There is this feeling that everything is urgent."
The onslaught of information means 61 per cent of workers feel overworked in their job, a recent RecruitIreland.com survey showed. It is estimated that five of the top 10 medical problems worldwide will be related to stress by 2020, Darcy's report pointed out.
Stress is associated with lower job satisfaction and motivation, higher absenteeism and sick leave, and a greater likelihood that the employee will quit, according to Prof David Guest from King's College London. Irish companies lose the equivalent of five million working days a year as a result of staff sick days, at a cost of €550 million, the Small Firms Association (SFA) has found.
Darcy believes the knowledge economy can attain greater productivity if we work smarter, not harder. As the volume of business information continues to grow, organisations which support their staff to effectively manage this information will be successful.
While the hierarchical office of 30 years ago required managers to closely monitor the output of their subordinates and placed great emphasis on presenteeism, the knowledge economy has forced a radical rethink of how an employee's success should be measured.
Increased traffic congestion around Irish cities means it makes sense for businesses to allow employees to log on remotely at home for the first few hours of the traditional business day and bypass rush-hour traffic, according to the report.
Some 37 per cent of full-time teleworkers report that working remotely boosts their productivity as they are able to get more done without the interruptions of daily office life.
There are now more than 100 million teleworkers worldwide, with two out of three Fortune 500 companies currently employing staff who work remotely.
Phone conferencing and video link-ups have reduced the need for employees to travel to meetings. In addition, these meetings tend to be shorter and more concise than those conducted in person, Darcy's paper showed.
"Irish companies haven't quite gotten over presenteeism, though the importance of work-life balance has been highlighted more," says Darcy. "But because employment is so high, employees are now very strong in voicing their requirements. They are prepared to tell a company that they are not interested in working for that organisation if it requires 12-hour days."
As we move towards a global workplace, Irish organisations are not only competing for high-level talent in a tight labour market at home, but with companies from all over the world. The battle to attract and retain top staff is key to maintaining Irish companies' global competitive advantage.
Indeed, the Economist Intelligence Unit has predicted that knowledge workers will be organisations' most valuable source of competitive advantage by 2020. As a result, Irish companies' ability to succeed in the knowledge economy will depend on how they attract and hold on to star employees.
Organisations can achieve this by ensuring they offer their staff opportunities to learn more and advance up the corporate ladder by providing new and exciting challenges, Darcy's paper showed.
Financial rewards are not sufficient, as proven by research from the SFA, which found that 85 per cent of private sector workers who moved jobs last year did so for reasons other than salary.
"We're moving to a situation where human capital is paramount," Darcy says.
"Managers need to identity who their star employees are and do all they can to hold on to them. No one is employed for life any more."
