Technostress and the Effect on Business

Ergonomics is showing how humans react and fit in with machines in their environment. Technostress is the negative psychological link between people and the invention of new technologies. Technostress is the ‘modern disease of adaptation caused by an inability to cope with the new computer technologies in a healthy manner’.
Technology is everywhere it is omnipresent and it has resulted in a number of changes in society and also in the way we live our lives. Technology seems to be creating changes that are not always good for our social, physical and intellectual well-being. There is a very popular book that deals with this topic by Dr. Weil and Dr. Rosen and they noticed over the past fifteen years the impact technology was having on family life.

They use the term ‘techno-cocoon’ to suggest that the modern family is isolated. Instead of spending family time together you have the children getting lost on their computer games and listening to I-Pods! Mum and Dad will be checking their phones, pagers and computers regularly. People are feeling invaded by technology and computers. We are bombarded by too much information and information can be addictive.

As soon as you get to work, before you even begin your day’s chores you have about thirty e-mails to trawl through! Then you may have voice- mails on your phone to listen to. Not mentioning all the faxes which are sitting on the fax machine waiting to be collected. Your smart phone beeps and tells you someone has messaged you and you should really check straight away in case it is urgent! Throughout the day your concentration gets affected and your jobs get paused as you deal with the demands of technology. Even when you return from work the temptation of the computer and the mobile phone are sometimes too much that you check them constantly.
We have communication overload! Recent research suggests that employees are interrupted no fewer than three times an hour by electronic communication. This results in less effective work and problems with concentration. Our employers are constantly asking us to understand and use one computer program and then another better one comes on the market and we need to learn a different set of commands! Another term used by Weil and Rosen is ‘Information Fatigue Syndrome’ to depict the fact we have too much information to digest and not enough time to do the tasks we are set.

This technostress poem was found on the internet and it sums up the feelings we have discussed above:
‘Technostress Overload Syndrome, even in my sleep I moan. Like a rising tide, a drowning man lying in the foam. Information piling up around me in my home, the network news an endless drone.
Technostress Overload Syndrome, I looked around my room. All of the headlines were preaching doom and gloom. All of the stations were spreading fear of whom, might unleash the next disaster, boom.
Technostress Overload Syndrome, I even get it on the phone. It comes in bits and bytes, over the dial tone, a flood of information until I just zone, have to hang it up and be alone.’
Suggested reading on the topic of technostress:
Brod, Craig (1984) Technostress: the human cost of the computer revolution. Reading, MA: Addison- Wesley.
Weil, M. And Rosen, D (1997) Technostress: Coping with Technology @Work John Wiley & Sons Inc.