According to Camden Council’s deputy chief executive, Rachel Stopard, a ‘digital megatrend’ is leading to exhausted staff because technology means they never switch off. She made the statement after a study revealed that one in five sicks days taken by staff at the Town Hall is attributed to stress or depression.
She says, ‘The council needs to be responsive to the digitisation megatrend that is creating the 24/7 workforce, with employees operating anywhere, anytime, on any device… There is a danger that “always on” may mean employees are never off.’
This doesn’t really come as much as a surprise considering that a report by the Health and Safety Executive found that in 2014/15 23.3 million days of work were lost due to work-related ill health and the average days lost per case for stress, depression or anxiety was 23 days. That said, we’ve actually reduced the number of sicks days going from 39.5 million in 2000-02 to 27.3 million in 2014/15. It could be argued that people are taking less days off because of heavy work loads which inevitably leads to a burn-out from work related-stress.
As well as seemingly having an affect on our mental health, technology is physically affecting our bodies: X-rays have shown how excessive use of our phones is giving us ‘tech neck’ and harming our spine.
So, there we go: just another reason how mobile phones are ruining our lives. Happy Monday, kids.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.