Scientists identify the bad in-box habits that can create tension in the office
O YOU constantly check work e-mails when you’re out of the office? If so, you are committing one of the seven deadly e-mail sins that could be damaging your mental health and that of your colleagues.
Everyone relies on e-mails. But some are so obsessed by the medium that it is driving them and the people they work with to distraction, says a report presented at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference.
Dr Emma Russell, from Kingston Business School, analysed 28 e-mail users to see which habits had positive and which had negative influences on working lives.
She identified seven habits that could be positive if used in moderation, but which were likely to be negative if not handled correctly.
The worst offending sins include ping pong messaging and requesting “read receipts” for every e-mail, according to a recent study.
E-mail ping pong, where messages are responded to immediately by both sides until a long thread builds up, are particularly despised by many of those involved, the study found.
The research also found that responding to out-of-hours e-mails might make an employee look keen, but also meant they were finding it impossible to switch off. This put pressure on employees to be on call around the clock and on those they dealt with to respond out of hours so they did not seem to be outdone.
Said Russell: “Some workers became so obsessed with e-mail that they even reported experiencing socalled ‘phantom alerts’ where they think their phone has vibrated or bleeped with an incoming e-mail when it has not.
“Others said they felt they needed to physically hold their smartphone when they were not at their desk so that they were in constant e-mail contact.”
Other sins include requesting a “read receipt” with every message, and automated replies to messages.
Some were bad for the sender rather than the receiver as they could lead to their giving the wrong impression of not remaining in control of what they were doing, which could be stressful, Russell said.
For example, having e-mail alerts switched on and responding to e-mail immediately can have positive benefits if one wants to show concern to the person who has e-mailed them. However, it may have negative repercussions in terms of the sender’s feeling that responding to e-mails is taking them away from other tasks and affecting their sense of well-being.
Ignoring e-mails could also be stressful, Russell found.
E-mailing while in the company of others was bad manners and showed a lack of concern.
Russell said: “This research reminds us that even though we think we are using adaptive and functional strategies for dealing with our e-mail at work, many of these strategies can be detrimental to other goals and the people that we work with.”
While there may be occasions when some of these “strategies” can be positive, such behaviours can suggest a pathological mindset.
Last month, researchers in the US discovered that people who regularly used the internet could exhibit symptoms seen in substance abusers.
Between 5 and 10 percent of internet users appear to show web dependency, and brain imaging studies show that compulsive internet use may induce changes in some brain reward pathways. – Daily Mail