Telepressure: Managing Email Stress
The lines between our personal and professional life have been and continue to be blurred whether you are back to office, remain virtual, or exist in a version of hybrid. Managing that blurred line and integrating work and life can inevitably lead to job satisfaction, mental well-being, and staying at a particular job.
Email Stress
Email has constantly been listed as both an asset and a stressor. It has been an amazing form of communication, allowing us to asynchronously coordinate both internal operations as well as external collaborations.
It was designed to be sent and exist in an 'inbox' until the receiver could deal with the content. However, that is not how it is often used. We regularly use it as an instant messaging system.
What is Telepressure?
There is a phenomenon that most people feel as an urge or pressure to respond to electronic communication immediately. This is called telepressure, even if the emails are sent well after hours and even if they start with "don't worry about this until tomorrow". This is listed as one of the main work stressors and reasons for most workers' inability to disconnect after work.
A recent study found that the constant urge to be responsive via email often leads to working during 'non-work hours', which in turn can impact many aspects of our well-being, from reduced sleep quality to the cognitive weariness that comes with burnout. As the traditional 9-5 office structure has morphed over the last year (and will continue to morph), maintaining healthy boundaries with our work life has been increasingly challenging, yet evermore important.
Role of a Leader
While we need to establish boundaries personally, it is much more effective if you create communication strategies as a team or company to protect non-work time for restoration. This will help create a culture to be proactive about mental health, reduce burnout at a systemic level, and help us all sleep more peacefully at night.
How do we decrease telepressure?
Delay send emails in the evening and weekends.
Microsoft Outlook and Gmail, two of the largest email service providers, both have the ability to draft an email and automatically send it at a later time (like tomorrow morning). One of the best features of work-from-home is the added flexibility of when we choose to work to better integrate those duties with the rest of our commitments in life (e.g., family, self-care, etc.).
However, delaying the sending associated emails to the morning of the next business day prevents our newfound flexibility in when we work from spilling over to other teammates who prefer the more typical 9-5 hours.
Communication Hours
Choose as a team or as a company what are appropriate communication hours. For example, some teams I work with agreed that they only communicate between 6am - 6pm (that is still 12 hours!!) and if the message is urgent to pick up the phone, if you are working outside of those hours, then exercise the 'delay send'. This can look remarkably different per company or per team; however, this creates clear expectations.
It is not limiting your flexibility of work hours (you can still write the email, delay send); it is protecting the work and non-work hours of others.
Personal and Professional Communication Channels
Email isn't the only communication method that generates telepressure. Work-related texting and unscheduled phone calls can also create a sense of urgency that can stretch our boundaries. Consolidating our professional communications to specific channels (like email or Slack) is one way to prevent a group chat about last night's reality TV show from turning into a reminder about work duties and violating our recovery time.
Do you really need to send that email at all?
Email has become the default communication strategy for many organizations, but that doesn't mean that every item actually requires an email.
One way to reduce telepressure is to consolidate our task-related emails and use other communication methods (like meetings or platforms like Slack) to simply send fewer emails.
The less crazy our inbox becomes, the less telepressure there is to constantly be on top of things.
Managing Expectations
We can do what we can within our teams, but outside our teams or external emails can be a different story. External expectations can be managed by creating a definition out of office responses explaining when and how you communicate or as an email signature. We teach people how quickly to respond based on the speed of our communication.
Emails rate as the reason for disruption of recovery time between office hours. To perform at our best, we need respite. Managing telepressure can be a powerful way to personally manage work stress and approach it from a systematic perspective.
The people we lead learn to work from how we work. They also learn how to not work from our leaders. Your influence on work is as profound as your influence on recovery.
Consciously design your day, or someone else will.
Reference:
Hu, X., Santuzzi, A. M., & Barber, L. K. (2019). Disconnecting to detach: The role of impaired recovery in negative consequences of workplace telepressure. Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 35(1), 9-15.
Dr Lisa Belanger
Lisa has a Ph.D. in Behavioural Medicine, an Executive MBA, and is a Certified Exercise Physiologist and High Performance Specialist.
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