08/01/2018

Email-induced Stress

How email incivility affects employees' output

Even if you shut down the laptop and turn off notifications on your phone, the impact of whatever’s in your inbox might still be lingering.

And that can create some problems on the homefront, according to a new academic study [PDF]. In The Long Arm of Email Incivility: Transmitted Stress to the Partner and Partner Work Withdrawal, researchers from the University of Illinois and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany analyzed the nature of email incivility—people being rude within their inbox or otherwise disrupting the work process—and how it crosses the boundaries between work and home. The researchers surveyed 167 dual-earner households at different times during the workweek and found that when one partner faced higher levels of email incivility, it often led them to withdraw from their work. The email stress even had an effect on their spouses or partners.

“What I found in my previous study is that email incivility—this general rudeness over email, whether it’s the tone, content, or timing of a message—really stresses people out on a daily basis,” stated YoungAh Park, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois, in a news release. She noted that such strain tended to show itself in numerous ways, “from physical symptoms such as headaches to feeling negative emotions.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.