Is deliberately being out of touch the next big thing? Obsessively checking emails and texts, Tweeting while trying to work, and going online to answer every little question can decrease productivity and lead to feelings of burnout, say many experts. But others, like Harvard Professor Leslie Perlow, author of Sleeping With Your Cellphone, are trying to show that intentional breaks in small doses can have workplace benefits.
An experiment with employees at the Boston Consulting Group had each member of a six-person team spend one night a week being unreachable electronically. Group discussions about the experiment led the team to rethink how to do their work. According to Perlow, team members felt empowered and expressed increased satisfaction with work and their work-life balance. The experiment has since expanded to more than 1000 teams in 14 countries.
Tony Schwartz, president of the Energy Project, which helps companies deal with information overload, told a New York Times reporter, “Every thoughtful and progressive organization realizes this is an issue we should deal with.”
If you are always available, people expect you to be always available, and breaking free of that loop is hard to do alone, says Perlow. She recommends small organizational changes that support new ways to work.
Steps to consider
- Turn off the email server from time to time. Sounds Draconian, but Volkswagon does this for a small group of shift workers.
- Create times when it’s OK to be out of touch, with a backup plan for emergencies and urgent needs
- Have employees monitor their use of social technology to see if it’s a problem or not
- Talk about the issue and promote discussions of new ways to work that allow for down time
