Technostress

What Brod meant by technostress

Craig Brod named it in 1984 and called it a modern disease of adaptation, caused by an inability to cope with the new computer technologies in a healthy way. The phrase has held up better than most coinages of that decade, though the definitions have moved on. Later work describes physical, behavioural and psychological strain arising from dependence on information and communications technology, from systems growing more complex, and from work itself being reorganised at the speed the technology allows. Atanasoff and Venable sorted the whole field into three headings: transactional and perceived stress, biology, and occupational health.

The contrast that clarifies it is with ergonomics. Ergonomics asks how a human body fits a machine. This asks what the machine does to behaviour once it is in the office and then in the house.

How technostress divides into its creators

Management information systems research produced the durable taxonomy, five conditions named as technostress creators, and each one describes a familiar working week.

• Techno-overload: the computer making a person work more and faster.
• Techno-invasion: the condition of being always reachable, so that the working day extends indefinitely, office work happens at all hours, and cutting away becomes nearly impossible.
• Techno-complexity: the effort of learning systems whose applications, functions and jargon are intimidating enough that keeping skills current is itself a source of stress.
• Techno-insecurity: the fear of losing a job to someone who understands the new devices better.
• Techno-uncertainty: the short life cycle of everything, with continual change and upgrade, no chance to build real experience with any one system, and knowledge going out of date faster than it can be acquired.

What technostress does to a body and a week

The symptom list runs through both registers. Physically: eye strain, backache, headache, stiff shoulders, neck and joint pain, dry mouth and throat, muscle tension, stomach discomfort, keyboard injuries, chest pain, a fast heart, irritable bowel, raised blood pressure, difficulty breathing. Emotionally: irritability, lost temper, indifference, frustration, feeling unappreciated, depression, guilt, fear, and a paranoia that ends in avoiding computers altogether. There is also a strange inverse, a high state of anxiety when separated from a monitor.

The psychological aspects are about the work rather than the machine. Information overload, in the sense of having to find, analyse, evaluate and apply information in the right context with the resources available. Underwork, where routine operations and underemployment generate their own frustration. Job security, in the specific form of a fear that computers will take over human roles. Professional jealousy over who is technically competent. Demotivation after long stretches of any technological activity, and uncertainty about what the job even is when so much of it now happens through a screen.

The consequences are measurable in the ordinary organisational terms. Job satisfaction falls, so does organisational commitment, and so does individual productivity. Insomnia, poor judgement and poor job performance follow.

Why appraisal decides whether technostress helps

Newer empirical work argues that the phenomenon has two halves and that studying only one of them was a mistake. The holistic model splits it into a techno-eustress subprocess and a techno-distress subprocess, and what decides which one runs is appraisal. A techno-stressor appraised as promoting the work, such as a system that is genuinely useful or that makes involvement easier, becomes a challenge techno-stressor with positive psychological responses and positive outcomes attached, including higher job satisfaction and lower intention to leave. A techno-stressor appraised as an obstacle, such as unreliability, insecurity or overload, becomes a hindrance techno-stressor, and everything downstream of it inverts.

Three intrapersonal processes govern the sequence, in this order:

1. Appraisal decides whether the condition is a challenge or a hindrance.
2. A decision process settles how to respond, after the appraisal but before the psychological response.
3. A performance process settles how to act on that response, after it but before the outcome arrives.

The model has been validated empirically in healthcare.

What is recommended against technostress

The remedies divide between the tool and the workplace. On the tool side: software people can actually use, proper education in new technology, and restricting or avoiding use where that is possible. On the workplace side: reassurance, patience and stability, better communication, and teamwork among colleagues, because several of the five creators are social rather than technical. On the personal side the advice is what it is for any occupational stress, meaning exercise, meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, a healthy diet, counselling, a schedule, and frequent breaks from the thing itself.