Digital detox in a company refers to a process or a policy of disconnecting employees from digital devices and technology in order to improve their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. This can include taking breaks from email, social media, and other forms of digital communication and technology, either during work hours or outside of work. The goal of a digital detox is to reduce stress, increase productivity, and improve work-life balance for employees:
Do you find that you’re unable to pull yourself away from your smartphone screen, causing you to waste significant amounts of time? Don’t feel alone. According to research, the overwhelming exposure to digital media was a source of concern for nearly two-thirds of respondents.
What’s more, sensory overload is a real risk of always-on connectivity, which might have severe consequences on quality of life. In the modern workplace, digital distractions such as social media and email have reached epidemic proportions. A primary goal of every successful company is to create an environment where workers can focus entirely on their tasks at hand and provide original ideas for the growth of the company.
Companies should take stock and consider the need for a digital detox as the number of employees becoming hooked to their gadgets grows. This article will discuss the measures companies can take to support their workers and the barriers they can put up to prevent employees from being distracted by technology at work.
Defeat Digital Distractions
Learning how to modify one’s own behaviour is more valuable than foregoing technology in the workplace. More than ever, in a day where digital distractions are on the rise, employees need training in the cautious and efficient use of all forms of workplace communication and technology. This shift would improve morale and productivity by giving employees greater control over their work environment.
Prioritize Thoughtful Communication Over Urgency
In today’s fast-paced business world, when responses must be made in real-time, meaningful dialogue sometimes takes a back seat to the need for constant contact. Organisational efforts, such as those put by businesses to categorise and file workers’ emails, are a waste of time and energy for everyone involved. Staff members waste at least 30 minutes sifting through email, much of which is irrelevant to their work.
In response to this need, Boomerang created a suite of productivity add-ons for the most widely used email clients, allowing end users to maintain control over their inboxes. Utilising these add-ons is a great way for businesses to make the most of their workers’ time in front of the screen. The option to pause inboxes and disable notifications during predetermined periods can help workers strike a better balance between their professional and personal lives, resulting in increased productivity and concentration when working remotely.
Online and Offline Communication Management
One possible downside of contemporary technology is the social isolation it may produce if everyone were to depend only on the internet as their primary means of communication. For teams working across time zones and continents, digital exhaustion may lead to misunderstandings about limits, preferences, and boundaries.
To combat this, asynchronous collaboration is essential. In principle, this means that teams may work on projects when it’s most convenient for them, rather than having to be “always on” and responding immediately to every message or email.
Batching Communication into Specific Blocks
If you want to get the most out of your workday, experts recommend scheduling certain blocks of time during which you won’t be able to check your phone, email, or Slack messages. This will allow you to focus on the tasks at hand and maximise your productivity.
The Pomodoro Technique is one method that has been shown to be effective in overcoming negative habits and increasing productivity. This revolutionary concept from the ’80s involves using a timer to split up work into smaller, more manageable portions that are then separated by shorter breaks.
The strategy calls for continuously focusing on a single task for 25 minutes, followed by a break of 5 minutes. It is much easier to tune out the seemingly never-ending stream of messages and concentrate on the task at hand if you know you will soon have the opportunity to take a break.
Consider Your Employees’ Well-Being and Morale
Even if a company has made the shift to digital technology, management still has the responsibility of ensuring that employees are happy and productive in their work. By fostering a more collaborative atmosphere in the workplace, it may be possible to lessen the negative impact of digital distractions and overload. As a leader, you should make it a priority to encourage more face-to-face interactions among the members of your staff.
One-Screen Limit
Doing too much at once might be counterproductive at times. Multitasking, in its purported form, causes fragmentation of focus. Because of this, it’s more challenging to focus on a single task. It also takes several minutes for our brains to readjust after being side-tracked from a particular task.
The use of one screen at a time is an excellent first step in achieving digital detox and is an action that is well-suited for routine practice in the workplace. Companies may do this by enforcing a strict one-screen policy (one computer monitor per person).
Encouraging Responsible Screen Time for Employees.
Did you know that 50% of people look at screens for 11+ hours per day, while over 25% look at screens for 14+ hours per day? A key contributor is remote work: 25% of people say their screen time has increased because of work. Away from the hassle of transporting from home to office and vice versa, the remote work arrangement is exciting to do. But there are ways to make it more exciting and, at the same time, healthy for employees, such as:
Managers encouraging responsible screen time and usage of valuable equipment such as a laptop stand to have an eye-level interaction with the screen
Automate Tasks
Spending more time in front of a screen occurs when tasks are performed manually on a computer or mobile device. However, many jobs in today’s business environment may be completed with no human intervention.
Onboarding is only one example of a typical collaborative activity that can benefit from automation. Using a teamwork platform like Microsoft Teams, you can set up individual workspaces for each recruit and fill them with all the materials, instructions, and responsibilities they’ll need to be successful in their new roles. Moreover, commercially available collaboration templates may spare you the trouble of starting from scratch every time a new employee is brought on board. Therefore, you can prevent digital distractions by using technologies and automating processes.
Reduce Meeting Duration
Nothing is more tiring than sitting through a meeting that appears to stretch on forever without any indication that it will ever finish. Their duration should be limited to maintain a high level of productivity during meetings. The need to constantly move from one screen to another due to having to attend many meetings in quick succession may lead to a situation known as digital overload.
It is essential to limit the amount of time spent in meetings to an appropriate amount and to allow small breaks at appropriate intervals so that participants may step away from their devices. Your eyes and spine will suffer if you stare at a screen for hours. Employees spend more time than is healthy in front of a computer screen because of the plethora of consecutive meetings.
Keeping attendees’ screen time to a minimum is critical, making presentation timing a top priority during meetings. If you want your meeting to stay on track and finish on time, someone has to be in charge of keeping track of the clock. As a result, you’ll have fewer pointless meetings, and those you have will stay on topic.
Put an End to Digital Distraction
As more companies implement hybrid work models, digital wellness has become a crucial topic for executives to consider. Given these developments, it is more crucial than ever that businesses take measures to safeguard employees from becoming dependent on their electronic devices.
Several factors, including those discussed in this article, contribute to the issue of digital distraction among workers in the digital economy. However, most of these problems may be solved by implementing very easy modifications. Try out the following tips for a month and then assess how helpful you found them to be.
Conclusio
company can implement the following measures to reduce distraction from social media in the workplace:
- Establish clear guidelines: Set policies that clearly define what is acceptable use of social media during work hours and what is not.
- Enable website and app blockers: Install software that blocks access to social media sites and apps during work hours.
- Encourage breaks: Encourage employees to take regular breaks from their screens and digital devices, including social media.
- Lead by example: Encourage leaders in the company to model appropriate technology and social media use.
- Foster a positive workplace culture: Foster a workplace culture that values face-to-face communication, collaboration, and teamwork.
- Monitor usage: Monitor the usage of social media and other technology during work hours to ensure compliance with the established guidelines.
By implementing these measures, a company can reduce distraction from social media, increase productivity, and improve the well-being of employees. Contact us, to support your business.
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