DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks

When you should turn off Twitter at work

Adi Gaskell user avatar by
Adi Gaskell
·
Jan. 17, 13 · Interview
Like (0)
Save
Tweet
Share
2.23K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

As regular readers of my blogs will know, I’m a staunch advocate of the benefits of social media at work. For instance I believe that aside from the fantastic benefits that emerge from letting employees engage more often with customers, use of social media also affords employees a brain break, thus allowing them to dive back into their work with renewed vigour.

I’m going to buck the trend in this article however and talk about how social media can damage your productivity. Except it’s not really just about social media so much as about the constant drone of interruptions that litter our daily lives in the typical open plan office.

A particular bug bear of mine is the, often noisy, telephone conversations other people have, but I’ll focus instead on the electronic disruptions because they’re quite so pervasive in not only our working lives but our home lives as well.

Traditionally this argument has centred around emails, and the disruption they cause to our thoughts when the little icon pops up notifying us that we’ve got a new message, but with social media this feedback addiction has multiplied considerably.

“Some industries are so highly volatile that people need to be connected all the time, but most of us overexaggerate our own importance,” said Dalton Conley, dean for the social services at New York University and author of “Elsewhere” (Pantheon, 2009).

“Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — if we’re always available, then we’re expected to always be available.”

Of course the reality is that most of us don’t need to be ‘always on’, and the world will keep on going if we don’t respond to that retweet or poke in the next five minutes.

The main reason for social media boosting productivity is that it gives employees a chance to chill out and relax their minds.  Being always on however can have the opposite effect.

The thing is, it’s kinda tough to do this on your own, just as it’s hard to get out of the long hours culture that sees us all working (or at least sitting at our desks) longer and longer.  It’s hard to take unilateral action without the company having your back.

With more and more of us taking our smartphones, and therefore our work, on holiday with us, to bed with us, and goodness knows where else, this is a change that needs to come from the top down.

An experiment by the Boston Consulting Group showed the benefits you can achieve by doing this.  Participants in the experiment were ordered to turn off all means of contacting them for one night a week and then report back on progress once per week at a team meeting.

To begin with, many were reluctant to participate.

“Some said they didn’t know what they would do with a night off,”

As a safety net, each ‘off-call’ member had another colleague covering for them and receiving their emails so they could respond to anything urgent. In the rare event of a real emergency that no one else could handle, the off-call person would be contacted.

What’s interesting about the results are that they proved considerably more positive when everyone was on board.  Team members felt empowered and expressed increased satisfaction with work and their work-life balance. It wasn’t just the time-off that benefited employees but the meetings each week enabled real collaboration on how to achieve better work-life balance.

An interesting real life case study of this can be found at Volkswagen. Earlier this year they agreed with staff that if they accessed their Blackberry 30 minutes after their shift ended that their access to the email server would be cut, only to be restored 30 minutes before their next shift.

Such initiatives will never happen without managers being on board though. Employee engagement is something many managers talk about at the same time as demanding ever longer hours from employees. Now’s the time to walk the walk as well as talking the talk.

Republished with permission

twitter

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • Automated Performance Testing With ArgoCD and Iter8
  • API Design Patterns Review
  • 13 Code Quality Metrics That You Must Track
  • Using AI and Machine Learning To Create Software

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: