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Digital Distractions: The Effect and Use of Digital Message Alerts and Their Relationship with Work-Life Balance

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Agile Working and Well-Being in the Digital Age

Abstract

Agile working in contemporary society necessarily involves using technology to work flexibly across different locations, time zones, etc. To be able to respond to an agile working environment, employees often keep digital notifications switched on, yet we know little about the potential impact this has on employee well-being and ability to function effectively at work. This chapter will focus on the role of physiological responses (as an index of hypervigilance) to digital messaging alerts and whether indices of heightened vigilance are associated with perceptions of poor work-life balance. We demonstrate that messaging alerts show evidence of heightened attentional switches in the brain, whilst neural measures of individual’s perceived balance between their work and non-work roles suggest a potentially vicious cycle of fatigue and hypervigilance accompanying poor work-life balance. Within this chapter, we explore these findings and consider how to reduce the cycle of physiological hypervigilance from poor work-life balance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Decibels.

  2. 2.

    I.e. indicative of brain activity or arousal.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Maria Uther

  2. University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

    Michelle Cleveland & Rhiannon Jones

Authors
  1. Maria Uther
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  2. Michelle Cleveland
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  3. Rhiannon Jones
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Uther .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Coventry University, Coventry, UK

    Christine Grant

  2. University of Sussex Business School (USBS), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Emma Russell

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Uther, M., Cleveland, M., Jones, R. (2020). Digital Distractions: The Effect and Use of Digital Message Alerts and Their Relationship with Work-Life Balance. In: Grant, C., Russell, E. (eds) Agile Working and Well-Being in the Digital Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60283-3_5

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