| Kathryn May | |
| The Ottawa Citizen |
Monday, September 02, 2002
Canada's employers are losing the productivity gains of the past decade because of the workload and stress that technology is piling on their workers, warns the author of a major study.
A landmark federal study of 31,500 working Canadians has found technology is one of the key reasons that one in four Canadians is working more than 50 hours a week, and it accounts for nearly all the unpaid overtime worked at home, says Linda Duxbury, a Carleton University business professor who co-authored the study.
Ms. Duxbury said the findings suggest the conveniences of technology have backfired, raising the demands of the job for many workers beyond what they can handle in a nine-to-five workday. This is especially the case for managers and professionals in the private and public sectors. The survey found virtually all the unpaid overtime done at home -- which averaged about five hours a week -- is "computer-supported" work.
"I think technology is a big piece of the longer working hours," said Ms. Duxbury. "People can now access their work and be accessible by work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that's what the expectations of the job are. So technology seems to be an added stressor, but it also seems to be an added set of tasks."
The massive study was commissioned by Health Canada to examine the conflicting demands of Canadians' work and family lives. The 2001 National Work-Life Conflict Survey, conducted by Ms. Duxbury and Chris Higgins, of the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business, is based on a survey of workers in 100 major organizations in the private, public and not-for profit sectors.
The findings of the group are considered representative of the larger population within 1.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The survey findings bury the myth that technology is leading the way to the "promised land" of a four-day work week and a stress-free, leisure society. In fact, Ms. Duxbury argues, technology is a prime culprit in driving up the incidence of stress, illness, burnout, absenteeism and all other costs eating into technology's productivity gains.
It also suggests a critical piece to the "productivity paradox" that has confounded experts who believe technology should have improved Canada's productivity much more than it has.
"It's not a straight link of more hours equals more productivity because we know that, after a point, if you work longer and harder you get more burned out, more stressed, make mistakes and are more likely to be sick and absent and that's all showing up in the data," said Ms. Duxbury.
"We know the people working these long hours and using technology to support it are stressed and more likely to be burned out, so the productivity paradox can be explained by the negative side of technology taking away from the positive."
As a result, Ms. Duxbury and Mr. Higgins conclude, employers and policy-makers have to come to grips with technology as a "negative tool" that must be managed to ensure they can mine the benefits and efficiency gains. And the first place to start is with e-mail, which has blurred the lines between "efficiency and effectiveness," said Ms. Duxbury.
"We lose sight of the fact that it's people who are using these technology tools and people have limits," she said. "Just because you can reach people quicker does not mean they can perform the task quicker. What's happened is the ability to communicate has increased tremendously, but the ability to get the job done has not gone up at the same pace."
The majority of respondents agree that technology -- computers, cellphones, Internet and e-mail -- has increased the interest in their work and improved their productivity. At the same time, almost no one said technology decreased their workload or stress on the job. About 62 per cent said the conveniences of technology have not made balancing their home and work lives any easier or better.
But the big problems arise among the half of the 31,500 respondents who use technology to do work at home outside of regular office hours. Ms. Higgins compared workers who do three or more hours of "computer-supported" work at home with those who never do extra work at home. She found the more time spent working at home, the higher the stress, burnout and likelihood of not getting paid for it.
Those who take home no "computer-supported" work are the happiest and have the most balanced lives. They tend to be clerical, secretarial, technical and blue-collar workers who typically work less than 45 hours a week, are usually paid for their overtime and report the lowest job stress and highest job satisfaction.
At the other end are the one in four Canadian workers who use technology to work more than three hours a week at home. They already work the longest hours at the office -- more than 45 hours a week -- are the most stressed and frazzled, and are unlikely to get paid for overtime. At the top of the list are managers, whom technology has made accessible 24 hours a day. About 68 per cent of managers surveyed said technology improved their productivity, but three-quarters also said it increased their workload and their stress.
Professionals are also big users of technology to get work done at home, but they say access to the Internet and e-mail has given them more flexibility to juggle the demands of work and home -- especially if they don't have children at home.
Ms. Duxbury says the difference is that technology has raised the job expectations of managers more than other workers. Middle managers bore the brunt of the downsizing of the 1990s, which both reduced their numbers and heaped more work on their plate. Ms. Duxbury said more research is needed, because the survey data doesn't answer which came first -- the extra workload or technology.
"What I can't tell from the data is do we have a bunch of workaholic people who can now extend their work day into the home easily because of technology, or is it technology that has made it difficult to separate work from their home life and get away?" said Ms. Duxbury.
"I suspect these are people in high-stress jobs with high expectations who can't get everything done and bought into the myth that if they use technology it will help them, when in fact what we find is that it helps them get work done, but at great personal cost."
The study is a wake-up call to the price Canadians are paying for bigger workloads and longer hours which, left unchecked, will result in higher health costs, lower profits and labour unrest, many argue. In fact, a survey of 1,100 labour leaders and managers done by the Canadian Labour and Business Centre concludes labour-management relations in the next couple of years are heading "for a pitch we haven't seen before," said CEO Shirley Seward.
"There is no one factor, and reasons vary from sector to sector, but we are seeing a pessimism that we're very worried about," Ms. Seward said.
