Managed.IT - issue 55

6 MANAGED.IT 01732 759725 Email bans do more harm than good warns study Businesses that seek to improve staff well-being by restricting access to email outside office hours may be doing more harm than good, warns a new study led by the University of Sussex. Personality differences as predictors of action- goal relationships in work- email activity , published in the Computers in Human Behaviour journal, reveals that while a blanket ban on email use outside office hours can help some workers achieve their goals, it can be counter-productive for others, especially those with high levels of anxiety and neuroticism. Such people, suggests the report, require the ability to control their response to an accumulation of email that can cause stress and feelings of being overloaded with work. Lead author Dr Emma Russell, a psychologist and senior lecturer in management at the University of Sussex, says that instead of blanket bans on email, organisations should personalise email strategies according to each individual’s particular goals. For work email, these are typically either to show concern to others, to carry out their work effectively, to preserve their well-being or to have control over their workload. She said: “One-size-fits-all solutions for dealing with work email are unlikely to work. Despite the best intentions, a solution designed to optimise well-being, such as instructing all employees to switch off their emails outside work hours, is unlikely to be welcomed by employees who prioritise work performance goals and prefer to attend to work outside hours if it helps them complete tasks. People need to deal with email in the way that suits their personality and goal priorities. When people do this, these actions can become relatively habitual, which is more efficient for their work practices.” The University of Sussex study comes at a time when restrictions on email are becoming more common: Volkswagen configures its servers so that email is only sent to employees’ phones half an hour before/ after the start/end of each working day (and not at weekends); Daimler switches off employee access to email during holidays; last year Lidl bosses in Belgium banned all internal email traffic between 6pm and 7am; and in 2017, France passed a law requiring companies with more than 50 employees to establish hours when staff should not send or answer email. The study can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/ yxhkufhz . bulletin Automation places premium on emotional intelligence The emergence of new technologies like AI and machine learning is placing a premium on employees with emotional intelligence (EI), reveals a new study by the Capgemini Research Institute. More than four out of five executives surveyed by the research company (83%) believe that EI skills, such as self-awareness, self- management, social awareness and relationship management, will become a must-have in the years to come. At the same time, the proportion of employees who believe automation and AI will make their skills redundant in the next one to three years has increased from 30% to 39%. Faced with greater automation of white-collar jobs, 76% of executives said employees will need to develop EI skills so that they can adapt to more client/ person-facing roles and take on tasks involving empathy, influence and teamwork that can’t be automated. Even so, less than 40% currently test for EI skills when hiring and only 17% provide EI training to non-supervisory employees in junior roles, who are most likely to be impacted by automation. In contrast, 42% of organisations provide EI training for senior management. www.capgemini.com/ researchinstitute/ Meet your new colleague Emma Fellowes, in collaboration with Behavioural Futurist William Higham and UK ergonomic expert Stephen Bowden, has produced a life-size model of what the typical office worker might look like 20 years from now if organisations do nothing to address the ergonomic shortcomings of today’s working environments. Emma has a permanently bent back caused by sitting for hours in a bad position; varicose veins from poor blood flow; dry and red eyes from long hours staring at a computer screen; swollen wrists and ankles from repetitive movement; sallow skin from years of artificial light; eczema from stress; and a swollen, hairy nose and hairy ears because of poor air quality. Fellowes claims that already more than nine out of ten British office workers are suffering from poor health due to their work environment, costing the UK economy £77 billion a year in work-related sick days. Common problems include strained eyes (cited by 50%), sore backs (49%), headaches (48%), stiff neck (45%) and sore wrists (30%). www.fellowes.com/Emma Short throw projection technology from BenQ was at the centre of an art installation by digital artist Charles Sandison at London’s HdM GALLERY in September and October. Entitled The Tyranny of Language , the installation used eight TH67ST projectors, each with its own media player, to display constantly evolving and multiplying AI-generated patterns of light and language. AI is here to stay AI is coming to a workplace near you – if it hasn’t already – and few seem concerned about it. In an international survey of more than 1,000 employers and 4,000 employees by Genesys, 64% of employers said they plan to use AI by 2022, with 25% already using it. While 17% of employees are concerned that their company could use AI in an unethical manner, 80% have no worries in this regard. Employers seem to be more aware of the risks, with only half confident that AI won’t be used unethically by their companies (54%) or by individual employees (52%). While 59% of UK employees don’t expect AI or bots to take their jobs within the next 10 years, 64% of employees and 61% of employers believe companies should be required to maintain a minimum percentage of human workers versus AI-powered robots and machinery. www.genesys.com