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Staying healthy in a digital era

A best practice guide toavoiding technostress and increasing employee resilience

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Contents

Debate about how to separate work and life is redundant. The prioritynow is to enable employees to seamlessly flow in andout of work, in a way that actually enhances their lives.

WORK

LIFE

FOREWORDIs work changing faster than people can cope?

TIMELINEHow has technology evolved to impact on work?

FUTURE TRENDSWill cloud and wearable technologies make things better or worse?

TECHNO STRESSThe dark side of technology

EXPERT VIEWEmployers need to play a proactive role

CASE STUDYOracle boosts employee wellbeing through resilience

TOP TIPS7 ways to increase employee resilience

SUPPORT How can Validium help?

Page 4,5

Page 6,7

Page 8,9

Page 10,11

Page 12,13

Page 14,15

Page 16,17

Page 18,19

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4 5F O R E W O R D F O R E W O R D

Is work changing faster than people can cope?

Just as email revolutionised the way we communicate, new technologies are now merging life and work into one, transforming traditional working patterns.

For some insights on how to help employees stay healthy under pressure, we hope you find our top-tips on how to increase employee resilience on page 16 useful.

The key point to remember is that what works for one individual or organisation won’t necessarily work in exactly the same way for another. After almost two decades of helping employees to stay healthy under pressure, we hope you find this guide a useful first step towards working out what approaches and policies will work best for your particular organisation

For several years now, the traditional boundaries between work and home have become eroded. For many, the extension of the office into our homes and mobile devices has been a good thing, allowing us to work more flexibly, where and when we like. For others, it has led to the intensification of work, giving rise to unhealthy working patterns, email addictions and ever increasing stress and anxiety levels.

As Professor Monideepa Tarafdar explains in our experts view (page 12), one thing is for certain: while we grapple to decide how best to harness technology for good and reduce its negative side effects on the mental health of employees, its prevalence is only set to increase. Just as email transformed the way we communicate, new cloud technologies will revolutionise the ease with which employees can access work remotely, transforming traditional working patterns.

With most workers already in the habit of connecting with work via email while out of the office or on holiday, the debate about how best to separate work and life is all but redundant. Instead, the priority now must be to address the ‘dark side’ of technology (page 10) to enable employees to seamlessly flow and in and out of work, in a way that actually enhances their lives. For example, by allowing working parents to go home early so they can enjoy dinner with their families, before reconnecting with work later in the evening. Or by giving younger workers, used to the flexibility of University life, the chance to realise the potential to work whenever and wherever they want.

As our best practice case study on page 14 shows, the pitfalls associated with empowering employees to work more flexibly are not to be underestimated. As technology pioneer Oracle discovered, far from being tempted to slack-off, the desire of remote workers to show that they’re still contributing, combined with the often invasive and addictive nature of email, means it’s far too easy for employees to make themselves sick with stress and anxiety by using technology to lengthen and intensify their working day in unhealthy ways.

As the innovative solution put in place demonstrates, the answer lies not in attempting to prescribe one-size-fits-all solutions, but instead educating employees how to work out what works best for them, so they can experience the benefits of remote and flexible working, without the potentially negative side-effects.

Mike ShawManaging Director, Validium

Mike ShawManaging Director, Validium

6 7T I M E L I N E T I M E L I N E

How has technology evolved to impact on work?

1980s

Technology startsto invade

Wealthy city workers start using mobile phones

Information technology starts to go mainstream. Bulky grey computers signify the start of the personal computer (PC), with operating systems capable of analysing data, word processing and a few other basic functions. The first mobile phonesgo on sale at almost $4,000 each.

1990s

Technology is now everywhere

The emergence of email accelerates the pace of work

Google makes the internetaccessible and 250 million Nokia 1100 devices are sold worldwide, taking mobile phone use mainstream. Workers can also access email via handheld Blackberry devices. The communication revolution brings about globalisation and increasesthe pace of work.

2000s

Technological growthis explosive

Working unpaid overtime becomes the norm

Companies that were using the internet to advertise their businesses now start trading online thanks to e-commerce. Social media allows customers to make decisions based on reputation, not just on price. An overwork culture emerges. Working unpaid overtime becomes the norm.

2010s

Technology integrates into our lives

Stress becomes the number one cause of absence

Apple sells 340,000 iPhones a day in 2012. The use of cloud technology enables employees to access email, the internet, work-related data and numerous ‘apps’, making flexible and home-working a reality. We now live in a digital world, unlocking our smartphones an average of 110 times a day1.

1 The history of mobile phones, knowyourmobile.com

It’s taken less than 40 years for information technology to evolve from having little or no impact on any of us to becoming an integral part of almost everyone’s lives.

We now live in a digital world, unlocking our smartphones an average of 110 times a day.

8 9F U T U R E T R E N D S F U T U R E T R E N D S

Will cloud andwearable technologies make things betteror worse?

The ability to access work remotely provides greater opportunities for flexible and remote working, but it could also intensify work in a negative way.

Companies can therefore become more agile and use more flexible working patterns to better meet customer needs and reduce pressure on office space, desks and car parking. As wearable tech becomes a familiar consumer item - a ‘must-have’ for many people - the more it will form part of everyday working lives, extending the level of access and connection with information and work tasks. IT is no longer available via a separate object, but is part of you. The Apple Watch and its physical alerts to texts and messaging is the obvious example of how wearable tech is now accepted as the norm. And Google is already envisaging a future where our clothing will be IT-linked as standard.

Cloud and wearable technologies are the latest drivers of change.

Cloud computing allows companies to access all the services employees need to do their jobs – from email and word processing to business intelligence data - via a large pool of shared remote servers, rather than its own data storage. Because the technology can be accessed remotely and securely, employees can access, use, save and share everything they need to do their jobs, via any internet connection.

For cloud technologies to enhance our lives, it’s essential that employers and their managers monitor carefully the impact new ways of working are having on both the health and productivity of employees, keeping an eye out for negative behaviours, such as email addiction and extreme working patterns, so they can put appropriate education initiatives and policies in place. The very real risk is that instead of using greater access to work more flexibly and productively, the treadmill effect simply continues, with the new flexible tech further lengthening and intensifying the working day, turning the current mental health problem into a mental health crisis.

The way in which work isn’t fixed to any one location where employees need to be physically present to operate effectively, clocking in and out, is an opportunity which will affect employees in different ways depending on their own style of working, attitudes and needs. While some people seem able to dip in and out of work in this way, the ‘always-on’ culture has also caused many others to become sick with stress and anxiety, helping to make mental health related issues the biggest cause of absence, costing UK businesses 13.5 million days a year. Fitting jobs around lives instead of lives around work, could enable workers to work when and how they want to - as long as they are psychologically prepared and supported to deal with the flexibility.

10 11T E C H N O ST R E S S T E C H N O ST R E S S

The dark side of technology

Despite its immense potential to improve employees’ lives for the better, increased use of technology is also at risk of damaging our mental health and giving rise to technostress.

Far from liberating us, the very ease with which we can now access and share information, to work from anywhere, means most of us now feel compulsive about being connected, forced to respond to work-related information in real time, trapped in almost habitual multitasking and left with little time to spend on sustained thinking and creative analysis.

The resulting ‘technostress’ phenomenon is now the subject of research at Lancaster University Management School, with five technostress-creating conditions identified as follows:

Techno Overload––––––––––––––Technology forces us to multi-task and exposes us to ever-increasing amounts of information, but there’s a limit to the extent to which we can process information efficiently. We still need to process information in a way that allows us to digest it and process it creativity. We still have to ‘cook’ data for it to become useful.

Techno Complexity––––––––––––Even if we’re strong advocates of technology, we still have to learn how to use it. The sheer pace at which technology is evolving means it’s difficult to keep learning new things, forcing us to devote time and effort in learning and understanding how to use new applications, which can often prove incredibly frustrating.

Techno Uncertainty––––––––––––––No one’s entirely sure what’s going to be developed within the next few years. The pace of innovation is particularly unsettling because knowledge becomes rapidly obsolete. Any initial enthusiasm for learning new applications and technologies can easily give way to anxiety about the need for constant refreshing and updating.

Source: Lancaster University Management School

Technology forces us to multi-task and exposes us to ever-increasing amounts of information, but there’s a limit to the extent to which we can process information efficiently.

Techno Invasion–––––––––––––––One of the biggest downsides to technology is its ability to follow us around. Thanks to technology, we can no longer easily switch off from work. The regular working day can easily extend into meals, family time and holidays, giving rise to ‘always on’ working and making us feel tethered to the workplace.

Techno Insecurity–––––––––––––––Technology is constantly changing the way we do things. Many of us worry that if we can’t keep up with new technology, we’ll be replaced by someone else who can, making us want to work harder and prove our worth so that we’ll feel less threatened and more valuable to the organisation.

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100100The six consequences associated withtechnostress are:

Role overload where technology causes workers to perceive their role to be too much

Role conflict when workers fail to agree with the ‘best practices’ offered by new technology

Reduced job satisfaction as those struggling with technology are given negative job appraisals

Decreased innovation as technology encourages more hurried and less creative responses

Reduced productivity as techno overload distracts people with unnecessary information

Technology dissatisfaction from staff who feel overwhelmed or intimidated by new technology

12 13E X P E RT ’ S V I E W E X P E RT ’ S V I E W

Employers need toplay a proactive role

The pace of technological change is such that, according to Moore’s Law, computing capacity doubles every two years, while the price halves. Such forces of magnitude cannot help but impact the way we work, generating a domino effect across the rest of our lives.

In reality we don’t have time to think about it. We’re on a treadmill and we’re constantly being bombarded. There’s little time to step back and think about the effect all this is having on workers.

We now have so much choice and flexibility in how we can work. When people first realised they could use technology to work from home, this became empowering. Now the ability to interact with work has reached into our mobile devices, it’s become expected that we will pick up emails and respond to colleagues or clients, whether we’re meant to be working or not. Many employees feel unable to ignore this expectation, even if they’re on holiday.

Employers need to take stock of the impact that this is having on employees. While detailed research is still being carried out, what we do know is that while some knowledge workers seem able to embrace dipping in and out of work, quickly responding to work at the school gate or before going out for dinner, only to quickly switch-off from work again, others really struggle to ever fully disconnect, making them far more susceptible to becoming sick with stress or anxiety.

Before the rise of cloud technology makes it even easier to access work remotely, HR has a vital roleto play across the following three areas:

Monitoring––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Assessing the extent to which technology-related health problems already exist within the organisation by measuring and monitoring technology’s effect. By working with IT, HR can help to create dashboards that alert employees to the extent to which they’re obsessively checking email, logging on remotely or extending their hours, so that educational resources and policies can be created in keeping with this.

Educating–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Creating resources and development workshops and events to alert employees to the risks of technostress and ways to reduce this. Ideally these resources need to be kept alongside other materials about dealing with debt, eating healthily, giving up smoking and dealing with other types of stress, so that preventing and dealing with techno stress becomes part of an integrated wellbeing programme.

Policies––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Forming policies that fit with the organisation’s needs, outlining the capacity in which email is to be used, suitable home-working patterns and weekend and holiday access. Rather than allowing negative working practices to evolve or prescribing exact working patterns, HR has a unique chance to put forward some options for what healthy technology use looks like, so that employees can select the approach that works best for them.

In summary, employers need to educate employees about the potentially negative side effects, monitor the extent to which these issues are occurring and challenge employees to find out and stick to what works for them.

Instead of allowing potentially harmful working practices to evolve, employers must start playing a proactive role to overcome the dark side of technology.

Professor Monideepa Tarafdar is a researcher at the Management Science Department, Lancaster University Management School (LUMS)

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14 15

The challenge

As a global organisation at the forefront of revolutionising the technology industry, Oracle is also pioneering ways to support its workforce to cope with the new challenges and pressures associated with working in an increasingly connected world.

Michelle Bradshaw, Compensation and Benefits Director for Oracle UK, explains: “The business world is changing dramatically with new technologies changing the way in which our people work. Increased globalisation means working across different time zones, while new cloud technologies are allowing more and more people to work from home, transforming boundaries between work and life.”

She adds, “We wanted our employees to embrace all the good things new ways of working have to offer but recognised this was already causing some of our employees to suffer from stress. In response we were keen to find a way of helping them to proactively manage their wellbeing so they could make healthy choices about the levels of pressure

they were putting themselves under. The overall goal being to increase their ability to stay physically and emotionally healthy.”

The approach

When it came to devising an overarching wellbeing strategy, Bradshaw recognised the importance of underpinning Oracle’s entire approach on a mental health foundation, “Mental health affects our ability to motivate ourselves, eat well, exercise and sleep well. If someone suffers from insomnia or eats too much junk, they may well have an issue with sleep or food, but the chances are there’s also a deeper problem around anxiety, depression, or another mental health difficulty that must be addressed for any physical wellbeing initiative to succeed.”

She adds, “Research shows that wellbeing initiatives based on a mental health strategy generate 300% more ROI than those that don’t, so we appointed Validium, the psychological health experts, to help us better understand the emotional needs of our workforce. The objective was to create a resilience workshop for employees to learn how to

proactively manage their mental health to stay healthy under pressure. Once that foundation was in place, a ‘Healthy Together’ initiative was planned to further both physical and mental health. For example by offering free fruit, not to be eaten at a desk in isolation, but with a colleague to also encourage proper breaks and social interaction.”

The solution

“To get the mental health foundation in place, we used focus group research to understand the emotional needs of employees,” says Michelle. “This revealed that they wanted to know how they could manage their time better, reduce stress levels, improve their physical health and connect more with the community at work.”

A key challenge faced by Oracle was improving the health of its large community of home workers. “50% of our workforce works from home, which, interestingly, puts them at increased risk of poor health as they’re less likely to take breaks and lack social support,” says Michelle. “Far from using the autonomy they have to slack off, the international nature of our business meant some people were getting up at 5am to talk to Asia, dealing with the UK all day, then America until 11pm. You might be able to do that occasionally, but if you do it several times a week, you’re going to start feeling anxious and depressed.”

She adds, “The number of people with ‘low mood’ and stress related issues was very high, but people still weren’t making the connection between how they were feeling and how they were behaving.”

In response, Validium devised a 3-hour resilience workshop to be delivered to 20 employees at a time. A key focus was teaching everyone to listen to their bodies and recognise warning signs: “The workshop was very action-based, looking at all the specific actions employees could

take to proactively increase their resilience. That meant everyone attending went away with a clear understanding of tasks they could do to protect their mental health, be it saying no to setting up calls with both sides of the world on the same day, taking a break to explore their local area at lunch or drawing a clear line between work and life so they could play with their children or talk to their partner in the evenings.”

The results

“There’s been a huge appetite for the resilience workshops,” says Michelle. “Of the 600 people who’ve already taken part, over 90% said they would recommend it to a colleague. Employees say they feel empowered and excited to make profound changes to their life. By helping them to see the importance of looking after themselves and their mental health, they finally understand the link between their performance and their wellbeing and are highly motivated to take part in the other physical wellbeing initiatives now being launched.”

She concludes, “The way in which Validium tailored the resilience training to the exact needs of our organisation was outstanding. It’s helped us to reduce absence and improve productivity. Employees feel very positively that Oracle is an employer that really cares about them and wants to look after them. It’s empowered our highly driven workforce to listen to their bodies, take proper breaks and draw a proper line between work and life.”

CA S E ST U DY CA S E ST U DY

Oracle boosts employee wellbeing through resilience

CASE STUDYRESILIENCE

“After completing the workshops, employees feel empowered to make profound changes to their lives to increase their emotional health.”Michelle Bradshaw, Compensation and Benefits Director for Oracle UK Ltd

“There’s been a huge appetite for the resilience workshops. Of the 600 people who’ve already taken part, over 90% said they would recommend it to a colleage.”

“We wanted employees to stay healthy under pressure.”

®

16 17TO P T I P S TO P T I P S

7 ways to increase employee resilience

Enabling your workforce to stay healthy under pressure depends on several key factors. Follow these steps to optimise your chancesof success.

1. Bring back downtime

Work used to flow in peaks and troughs. We used to have a busy day or year-end, only for things to calm down again. Now, everyone is under constant pressure. One in five people works through lunch, while many others use their commutes to catch-up on emails, send texts or conduct research, so as not to ‘waste’ time. Yet regular breaks make us more creative, productive and less error-prone; we need to clear our minds at least once a day to maintain perspective and differentiate between what’s important and what’s urgent. By encouraging leaders to role-model thinking and reflecting, and even gazing out of windows, you can start the journey towards increasing resilience by giving people the mental respite they need to start working smarter, not just harder.

2. Provide mental health education

Just as there are numerous things we can do to optimise our physical health, such as exercising, eating well and not smoking, the Mental Health Foundation has identified 10 things employees can do to sustain good mental health, from taking regular breaks and asking for help, to staying in touch with friends and making time for activities they enjoy. then, employers can help by sharing this information and encouraging

employees to consider how to put these principles into practice as part of their ongoing development. Ideally, every child would leave school with the knowledge and ability to proactively manage their mental health. Until then, employers can help by sharing this information and encouraging employees to consider how to put these principles into practice as part of their ongoing development. Asking new employees to create a mental health plan, based on these principles, could also become part of their induction process.

3. Put in place limits

The simple act of going to work means we have to suppress our desire to stay in bed. If we delay going to lunch to hit a deadline, we have to suppress the physical desire to eat. If we opt to work late, we suppress the emotional desire to spend time with family and friends. We do this of our own volition because we want the resulting sense of achievement, career progression or financial reward. Humans have a great capacity for work and generate huge satisfaction from learning and driving themselves to achieve, but at some point the level of suppression becomes unhealthy. By using resilience training to educate employees how to listen to and act on their warning signs, you can stop them from pushing themselves past their personal limits.

4. Empower employees

If you asked an employee to put their hand into a fire, they’d refuse on the grounds that it would burn them. But if you set them an unobtainable target, they would probably try to achieve it. That’s because although we understand the impact of the choices we make on our physical health, we’re much less aware of the impact on our mental health. Most employees are now in the habit of relentlessly pushing themselves. Then, when they fall into a low mood or find themselves shouting at their partner, they fail to see the connection. As well as educating employees about the relationship between the choices they make and their mental health, they also need to be empowered to have a choice - to be allowed to say no when things get too much.

5. Show managers how to care

Empowering employees to say nois a first step. Training managersto accept this - and to coach employees to find other ways forward – is another thing altogether. By the time employees become so stressed that they ask for help, most just want to be given the answer. Managers are only too keen to give employees answers, but, ironically, giving answers is not the best solution. Employees need to be listened to, coached and offered options so that they can feel in control and empowered to make their own decisions and plans. Managersoften observe employees struggling but are under as much pressure as anyone to get the work done. Offering help, support and empowerment take precious time and energy, which managers often feel they don’t have. This can lead to managers turninga blind eye to problems, hoping thatif they ignore them, they will disappear. Critical to turning this situation around is developing managers’ ability to exercise their duty of care by encouraging employees to look after themselves.

6. Prevent email addiction

Employees are now ‘anxiously attached’ to their mobile devices, with 88% compulsively checking their email when they leave the office ‘just in case work sent something important’. We’re conditioned to respond quickly to email at work, but it’s a reflex that’s difficult to switch off, especially if they feel anxious about what’s happening in their absence. They’d rather know what that ping meant than ignore it and imagine the worst, causing them to constantly check in only to end up dealing with trivial matters. Although it’s ultimately up to the employee to find a way to use email healthily, employers can help with education about the addictive nature of email and policies and processes for limiting this, such as using other forms of communication if something urgent actually arises.

7. Change the culture

Of course, no amount of training or policies will change things for the better if managers aren’t preparedto lead by example. For example,if the company wants to discourage the use of email on holiday, but the department head spends more time on his forecast than his suntan, the message is: ‘This what it takes to get on here’. Similarly, if managers tell someone who confesses they’re feeling overloaded to ‘just get on with it’, or criticises employees for not responding to a weekend email, nothing will change. Leaders and managers must therefore be helped to understand the scale of the mental health issues now facing their organisation, and to become empowered to become part of the solution.

Mandy Rutter is head of Resilience & Trauma Management Services at Validium | The Psychological Health Consultancy

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How can Validium Help?

The ability of your people to attend and perform at work is one of your key business drivers. Employers who proactively manage the mental health of their workforce experience far less stress and absence issues than those who don’t.

By working in partnership with you, Validium can help you to exercise your duty of care to keep employees healthy under pressure.

Our absence-prevention services include:

1-Day Resilience Workshop

Reduce the risk of employees becoming sick with stress or anxiety when you educate them how to proactively look after their mental health. Bite-sized courses are also available.

Manager Development Programme

Develop managers to build resilience in themselves and others by making a Managing Mental Health module an integral part of their learning and development.

Delivered by one of the UK’s leading resilience psychologists, role-play helps managers to discover how their roles as leaders can help or hinder the creation of a mentally healthy work environment. Role-play and post-course learning materials help embed learning.

Managers are also trained how to save valuable management time by guiding employees with mental health issues towards appropriate support. They are also encouraged to use a dedicated mental health helpline, for expert advice on managing employees affected by mental health issues. Or to discuss how best to support someone they’re concerned about.

Employee Benefits Awards: The Managing Mental Health module developed by Validium for Nationwide was shortlisted for Best Mental Health Resilience Strategy.

Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs)

Help employees to overcome issues making them distressed with round-the-clock access to emotional support, legal, financial, debt, childcare and eldercare information.

“There’s been a huge appetite for the resilience workshops. Of the 600 people who’ve taken part, over 90% said theywould recommendit to a colleague.”

Michelle Bradshaw | Compensation and Benefits Director, Oracle UK Ltd

“Validium’s help to educate managers how to build resilience in themselves and others has led to clear benefits for employees and the business, helping to save 5,500 working days.”

Ann Brown | HR Director, Nationwide

Need to rehabilitate someone affected bya mental health issue?

Find out how much it will cost to rehabilitate an employee already affected by a mental health issue with our psychological assessments and return-to-work programmes.

“The psychological assessments and rehabilitation services provided by Validium have helped us save tens of thousands of pounds in wasted management time, decreased productivity and replacement staff costs.”

Paddy Lorenzen | Occupational Health and Wellbeing Manager, Norfolk County Council

Our Customers

Customers tell us they like working with us because our clinical expertise and flexibility means bespoke solutions that quantifiably increase the value of their people to the business.

Our Approach

Our outstanding track record is due to our commitment to our values:

Measurable Impact

Our focus on results means you can expect a quantifiable return on your investment.

Partnership Working

We promise to work in partnership with you, tailoring best practice to meet your particular needs.

Clinical Expertise

We offer the highest levels of clinical expertise to ensure all your people are professionally supported

Quality Service

Our commitment to setting the standard for our industry ensures you get a world-class service

“88% of employees who used the Validium EAP said the practical and emotional support provided stopped them from going off sick.”

David Cooper |HR Director, Royal College of Nursing

Want to reduce mental health-related absence?

To set up a FREE consultationto discuss how best to address mental health-related issues within your organisation, please call:Mandy Rutter | (0)1494 685315or email | rtms@validium.com

FREE CONSULTATION

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