The role of digital wellness in enhancing work productivity

26

Technology exists to enhance our lives — to assist us connect faster and create higher. But we’ve reached a degree where the always-on nature of technology is sabotaging workplace productivity. 

Digital wellbeing is the concept that technology must be tuned to on a regular basis life as an alternative of dictating lifestyles. It promotes a healthy relationship between people and tools, which improves mental and physical wellbeing. 

Based on a recent HR.com report, 87% of companies that put money into digital wellness, manage to retain existing employees. At a time when the skill gap is a serious challenge for firms, you can’t risk losing your biggest asset. 

Table of Contents

The connection between digital wellness and productivity

Employees are productive once they’re focused, engaged, and inspired to contribute. All of those traits are amplified by technology — to some extent. 

If employees are expected to be connected well past their office hours and multitask throughout the day, they feel burnt out, drained, and unmotivated. 

Digital wellness creates strict and clear boundaries between work and life so people can wind down and loosen up inside a relaxing environment. It also means creating focus schedules so employees can carry on tasks without interruptions. 

We hear more about digital wellness today because workplace productivity has gone down prior to now few years. And it’s not just because employees are lazy. 

Gallup did a series of surveys on worker engagement and listed here are some key insights:

• Only 34% of U.S. employees think they’ve the proper tools to do their work right in 2024 — the bottom in a decade. 
• Only 38% of U.S. employees feel they’re cared for at work in 2024 — the bottom in 11 years.

At a time when workplaces are integrated with tons of of productivity tools, these numbers are surprising. Corporate wellness shouldn’t be implemented the best way employees prefer, costing companies $322 billion in employee burnout. 

That is why we want to rethink digital wellness and the way it might enhance work productivity. 

Key components of digital wellness

With digital wellness, you possibly can reclaim hours lost. It might probably be broken into three parts:

Physical health

How we feel physically, dictates how we operate. You must make the office as comfortable as possible for workers to work in. It includes using ergonomic chairs and tables to avoid muscle cramps, offering gym subscriptions and on-site facilities, mandating frequent walks across the campus, and inspiring employees to take stairs. Caring for physical health also reduces preventive diseases, which saves hundreds of dollars for businesses. Senior executives who lead by example see way more engaged employees. 

Mental health

Work-induced stress is considered one of the important thing reasons employees feel disconnected from their work. Frequent meetings, multitasking, taking work home, and micromanagement impact mental wellbeing. By offering on-site, unconditional mental health support and leisure areas, you possibly can allow employees to recompose themselves. This also includes respecting work hours and enforcing screen-less time at work.

Social wellbeing

Often the ignored part, social wellbeing plays a large role in how engaged employees are. Based on the Gallup study, employees who’re acknowledged by others feel they belong to the organization. Frequent cross-team collaborations, recreational activities, and face-to-face meetings allow employees to be a part of the social structure.

A variety of businesses only give attention to one aspect of worker wellbeing, making your complete campaign a failure. 

Digital hygiene and online security: Pillars of digital wellness

The central idea of digital wellness is our relationship with technology and devices. To ensure that our mind, body, and social interaction are balanced, we must understand digital hygiene and security.

Maintaining digital hygiene

We love a clean house, but are our digital habits as hygienic? Probably not. Employees are required to be connected to several screens and apps all day but here’s the interesting bit: multitasking doesn’t come naturally to the human mind. We will do it, in fact, but only to a certain extent. That’s why try to be aware of context switching.

Context switching is the practice of switching between unrelated tasks and projects, which requires our brain to decelerate and regain focus for the subsequent task. The University of Irvine did seminal research on it and located that human brains start feeling stressed and drained after about 20 minutes of frequent interruptions. The always-on nature of technology which we regarded as the most important aid to productivity, is killing it. 

To ensure that context switching and screen time don’t stress out employees, allow them to perform digital detox. It includes having a set period to keep away from screens, organizing and reducing the variety of technology getting used, and enforcing “don’t disturb” sessions to maintain away distracting notifications. Digital hygiene works on all the important thing components we’ve discussed above so there’s no downside to screen-free breaks between work.

Online security measures

Digital hygiene at work will be prolonged to make sure devices and data inside them are decluttered, protected, and arranged. Security plays an enormous role in workplace productivity as 93% of security breaches lead to unplanned downtime and data loss. 

Listed here are just a few ways you can assist employees scan attack surface and improve personal and skilled security:

• Implement strong password management practices: This includes using a minimum of 12-character alphanumeric passwords, periodically changing them, not recycling old ones, and avoiding popular phrases as passwords. Employees must also use password management apps, and multi-factor authentications (MFA) so as to add extra layers of security. Most cyberattacks are results of ignorance so employees must proactively keep their passwords and workflows secure.
• Recurrently update software: When discussing the stress attributable to frequent interruptions, we must also consider system notifications like updates and security patches. Many employees find these notifications irritating and infrequently disregard them. Nonetheless, these updates are crucial for enhancing system stability and addressing security vulnerabilities, including zero-day exploits. This is especially vital for VoIP security, as unsecured communication channels could be a significant risk. Subsequently, it’s essential to be certain that all work devices are consistently updated with the newest patches and to encourage employees to put in these updates promptly.
• Following secure browsing practices: Employees must tick off just a few things while browsing the online. These include only opening URLs that start with “https”, using VPN and ad blockers to scale back tracking, verifying files before downloading, and using email and file management services that provide strong encryptions. 
• Educating employees on phishing scams: If you ought to be secure online, it’s worthwhile to have a watch to catch fraud. Because of AI, phishing,ransomware, and smishing scams have evolved. It’s now very easy to send professional-looking emails, mimic voices, and redirect people to fake web sites. These attacks often goal victims who should not aware of the signs and fail to confirm the data. Corporations must train employees to detect phishing attempts and follow SOPs to resolve them. An identity theft protection plan can assist as well.

Implementing digital wellness programs within the workplace

The excellent news about incorporating digital wellness is you can implement just the foundational concepts and achieve many of the results. These include training, resources, and integration.

Listed here are some steps to do this:

Workshops and training sessions

There’s a disconnect between what digital wellness looks like for firms and the way employees feel about it. Proper training can bridge that gap. 

Start by training employees on the importance of corporate wellness and the varied perks the corporate offers to them. With workshops, you possibly can nurture employees’ social health and make them more aware of their colleagues and surroundings. These sessions are also a part of digital detox, allowing employees to let go of stress and absorb the content. 

With frequent training sessions, employees will learn their device usage patterns, the unhealthy traits they’ve been cultivating, ways to deal with the problems, and proactively stop technology from taking on their lives. Be it digital security or wellness programs, lack of expertise is the first reason why workplace productivity has gotten worse in recent times — something that will be addressed with training. 

Providing materials and tools

As highlighted previously, the Gallup report found that just one in three employees have the right tools to succeed at work. Solving that must be the subsequent step. 

As a business, you need to offer ergonomic setups and subscriptions to wellness apps. Once employees learn block inappropriate content and limit screen time, they will feel the outcomes. 

Lack of right intent is considered one of the important thing the explanation why firms fail at meaningful digital wellness programs. But just a few firms have succeeded at this.

VoIP company RingCentral has “CaRing days”, a wellbeing program introduced after the pandemic. Employees can utilize CaRing days nevertheless they need — the goal is to unwind and be more present with individuals who matter. Because of RingCentral’s TaskHuman app, employees can get 24/7 mental health and yoga counseling. On top of that, RingCentral’s Employees Resource Groups (ERGs) have grown in number, signaling that an increasing number of employees are signing as much as foster higher relationships with colleagues and be a part of something larger. RingCentral’s holistic wellness programs give people flexibility, recognize labor, and make employees more productive at work. 

Corporate wellness programs work higher when employees see leadership teams walking the talk. Social media marketing company Buffer is one such example. Back in 2019, its CEO Joel Gascoigne openly talked about feeling overwhelmed and seeing a therapist. This type of gesture opened up conversations and encouraged the staff to take motion. 

At the peak of the pandemic, Buffer introduced a 4-day work week to prioritize mental health and rest. It documented the journey and located that 91% of employees are more productive in a 4-day work week. Buffer can also be a pacesetter within the “unsick day” movement that dedicates sooner or later to preventive care. Honest and intentional steps like these allow Buffer to construct a healthy culture and reduce productivity loss. 

Now that you could have an idea about go about integrating digital wellness into your organization, listed here are some tools which may make it easier to:

TimeDoctor

TimeDoctor is a productivity and workforce management tool. It helps employees track their performance and managers gain visibility of workforce metrics. It’s a no-fuss time tracking tool that doubles up as a productivity dashboard. TimeDoctor is good for distant teams and for managers seeking to discover bottlenecks and automate admin tasks. 

Headspace

Headspace is probably the most trusted mental health apps and for good reasons. The Headspace at Work platform promotes meditation and mindfulness with an intuitive UI and keeps employees motivated with various challenges. Probably the greatest features of Headspace is the flexibility to attach with friends as accountability partners, allowing everyone to enhance their mental health. 

You may also try apps like Calm and Wellable for workplace digital wellness.

AdGuard

Should you’re seeking to cut down distractions while browsing at work, an ad blocker is a must. AdGuard is probably the most reliable and powerful browser extensions we’ve come across and it gets the job done. It really works in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox so employees’ browsing habits are covered with it. 

You may also try AdBlock Plus, uBlock Origin, and Ghostery.

Internxt

Internxt is an ideal alternative for online collaboration and productivity. This cloud storage service is a unbelievable alternative for any team concerned with protecting their work, because it lets to store and share files in complete privacy. 

On top of their flagship features, Internxt developed free security tools to make sure data safety for teams, equivalent to Temporary Email, Virus Scanner, Password Checker, Password Generator, File Converter and more to return next months.

ExpressVPN

If you ought to protect office devices from cyberattacks, you can’t go incorrect with ExpressVPN. It’s a tried and tested VPN service that’s scalable for businesses. It’s fast, it’s lightweight and it comes with top-notch privacy features. You may find cheaper alternatives available in the market but ensure that you’re not compromising on security. 

If ExpressVPN doesn’t fit your use case, try SurfShark, Mullvad, and TunnelBear. 

BitWarden

A very good password manager is as essential as any productivity tool today. Should you follow best practices equivalent to long and sophisticated passwords and steadily changing them, an app like BitWarden will serve your employees well. It’s reasonably priced and if you could have the bandwidth you possibly can host it by yourself. 

In case you wish extra features, you possibly can try 1Password and Dashlane. 

Aura

Aura is a private security and credit monitoring platform that goals to maintain personal data protected. If you ought to know how to protect yourself from identity theft and secure your loved ones data, Aura can be of massive help. 

AI Tools

AI tools are revolutionizing productivity and digital wellness. For instance, AI-powered video editing software can automate tasks equivalent to generating transcripts and creating AI clips, which saves effort and time for creators. Moreover, AI writing assistants like Grammarly improve grammar and clarity in real-time, enhancing written communication. These tools not only boost productivity but additionally promote a healthier digital lifestyle by streamlining tasks and reducing mental load.

Challenges and considerations

Digital wellness might just be the reply to workplace productivity challenges but why are only just a few firms implementing it? And more importantly, why are most firms failing at it?

The reply is corporate inertia. Corporate wellness is a cultural and behavioral shift greater than a technological shift. Drastically changing how a workplace functions shouldn’t be a simple task, however the downside of a stressful workplace is even worse.

Should you’ve decided to assist employees construct a healthy relationship with technology, you should put meaningful efforts into it. Things like cost and vendor considerations will come up but you should have a look at the large picture. As a substitute of expenses, you could have to treat it as an investment. 

You may face resistance from employees as well. In spite of everything, you’re asking for drastic lifestyle changes. That is why training and workshops work. Expose people to the downsides of digital dependency, persuade them of the worth, and lead with examples to indicate go about it. Since we will’t go without technology as of late, it becomes a balancing act. If firms start respecting the boundaries, employees might reconfigure their lifestyle too.

Conclusion 

Existing wellness strategies lack personalization and intuitiveness. Considering the degree of changes, you would possibly not see results immediately — but there’s all the time something to begin with. Should you follow the recommendation discussed above, you’ll have the ability to create a support system for workers, making them more wanting to contribute to the corporate’s success.