Bizcuits | Connectivity expectation overload

Leanda Lee

A topic close to my heart, and coincidentally commented on by a number of friends and colleagues this week and again tangentially in this column by Jenny Lao-Phillips yesterday, is the pervasiveness of work connectivity. Dr Lao-Phillips found that one of the reasons given for Macau’s young professionals to take off overseas on holidays was to extricate themselves from the clutches of work expectations to respond to emails and phone calls while on holiday.
Connectivity has been a mixed blessing. It has given us flexibility to be where we want and need to be without the opportunity cost of not being elsewhere. It saves us time, allowing us to do more in spare moments, thus increasing productivity and saving company resources. It offers us information at our finger-tips, immediacy and responsiveness. Globally mobile individuals can stay connected to friends and family, and maintain those relationships better. The need to pinpoint rendezvous to exact times and spaces are far gone, even if those last minute changes to arrangements by typically younger acquaintances still rankle: It’s often quipped that before mobile phones we organized ourselves better and had the ability to wait.
Connectivity comes at a price that not every one of us is prepared to bear. I often ponder if the concern is generational, but those devices do intrude. It is an addictive intrusion. They intrude on the attention I want to receive and the attention I want to give to what and who is in front of me. It poses a real threat to non-digital relationships. I can (barely) control my own device usage but have no hope against those around me.  The constant angst about being connected and potentially missing out on something meaningful by taking that dreaded step to disconnect is exhausting: my attention is shallower, and my thinking less critical as the pings call me to multitask, dissipating concentration. Maybe we achieve more, but I’m sure we achieve a lesser kind of more.
I applaud Jenny’s group of young Macau professionals on their, although perhaps extreme, approach to dis-connectivity. They are not alone in their need.
A recent study by Liuba Belkin and colleagues presented at the Academy of Management annual meeting this August has found that it is not just the act of responding to work emails out of work hours but the expectation that they will be responded to that creates stress – anticipatory stress. Organisational expectations are the problem. Even if it is not explicit, where there are norms of availability, there is always an anticipation of work which acts as a constant stressor. Employees just cannot detach, they cannot rest, and this undermines the work-life balance so necessary for alleviating emotional exhaustion which in turn undermines job performance.
The expectation of work connectivity is even harder for employees who have a preference for segmentation and compartmentalisation of their work and family lives. We in Macau have been good at making and maintaining that distinction, but if Jenny’s runaways are any indication, perhaps that, too, is changing.
Of course, some workers happily mingle work and family life, but for the others who need the space and time, employers can help them rest and detach by not setting connectivity expectations to start with. Formal and informal policies of no emails, phone calls or messages after certain hours or on rest days have been put into place by organizations large and small across the globe, and right here in Macau.
Concerned about the increase in job-related burnout, the French government has placed a provision -Article 25- in the Labor Reform Bill to encourage medium-to-large companies to establish formal policies restricting out-of-hours electronic communication.  Here in Macau, too, we could support a return to community values and do better than validate the insidious beliefs of hard-noised bosses that work-life balance belies job commitment and dedication. Such a work ethic is written upon faces, not in after-hours emails.