Technostress and Algorithmic Systems @ Work
Posted by Thomas Klikauer
To a large extent, what we call “technology-related stress” or technostress is a form of work-related stress that occurs at and around work.
It is a negative and at times, harmful psychological reaction often caused by management when introducing new technologies (e.g. algorithmic systems or for example, a new management system like algorithmic management into a workplace.
Technostress can occur in a business office or with the recent rise of “working from home”, even at home, particularly when the kitchen table becomes a home office.
Like many other forms of workplace stress that is (again) often brought about by line-middle, and top-management, things get worse when new technologies (e.g. GPS-trackers, tablets, wearables), management methods (management fads), and work systems (work intensification) are forced onto workers, particularly when this is done without consultation and without union involvement.
In addition, workers often experience technostress when they are pressed to adapt to, for example, new forms of information technologies, particularly when it is done in an unhealthy way.
With ever more online technologies used, workers can be made to feel overwhelmed by an obsessive management demand to be online.
However, and in sharp contrast to the often-exercised managerial top-down introduction of a new technology, ergonomics, for example, does the very opposite.
Ergonomics advocate against fitting workers onto a machine or a technical environment. Instead, ergonomics put workers at the center.
When workers are made to be merely appendages to machines or, for example, algorithmic systems, technostress can be a very likely outcome.
Management, at times, turns the demand to be online into a “corporate command” tenaciously pushing workers to stay endlessly connected and share constant updates, feel obliged to respond to work-related information in real-time, and engage in habitual multi-tasking.
Worse, these managerially induced habits can be turned into a 24/7 habit and workers feel obligated to work faster because online information flows faster and faster. In some cases, management makes workers believe that they have little or no time for sustained thinking, pause, consult others, and creative analysis.
Unsurprisingly, technostress is a rather modern disease. Some causes may include: enforced adaptation to, for example, algorithmic systems (a technique) and/or algorithmic management (organizational); by a worker’s inability to cope when management introduces new computer technologies, leaving workers simply overcome by such new systems and are often undertrained when facing ever more and ever new demands by management.
Overall, technostress is an unwanted and unwarranted occurrence produced by the use of computing and online communication devices such as desktop computers, tablets, laptops, smartphones, smartwatches, and so on. These crank up the managerial demand for workers to be available 24 hours a day.
Despite everything, the harmfulness of technostress is also influenced by gender, age, and the level of “computer literacy”. For example:
- women experience lower technostress than men,
- older people experience less technostress at work than younger people, and
- those with greater computer literacy experience lower technostress.
Beyond all that, technostress at the workplace is also connected and present a potential risk to workplace burnout.
With management constantly increasing the range of digital technologies, these technologies, once set up through anti-democratic top-down management are the cause of work stress. In other words, there are technology-related and management-related stressors at workplace.
For one, there are ever more technology-related disruptions (constant streams of messages, online meeting requests, text messages, emails, etc.).
This is made worse by a seemingly unstoppable information overload coming from management (read: truckloads of daily email requests).
All this is made worse by an utterly incomprehensible combination of artificial intelligence, algorithmic management and algorithmic systems.
This combination can easily cause technostress. It gets worse when management demands the completion of a work-task and an IT system fails. In such cases, experts speak of tech-uncertainty.
Meanwhile, the move from technostress to corporate burnout is very short. Technostress and burnouts are a rather widespread phenomena among working people across industries and across the globe. Worse, workplace stress, technostress, and burnouts are increasingly becoming rather common.
With the rapid introduction of digital technologies by management, the term “technostress” has become established – starting in the late 1980s. Today, a common model of technostress relates this kind of work stress to:
- productivity and business success (read: corporate profits) and
- organizational role stressors like role ambiguities, managerial conflicts, role overload
Such an understanding of technostress considers the direct impact of working with modern technologies on the mental health of employees as well as the indirect connections of technology at a trifold “technology + management + worker” interface between (a) algorithmic systems (the technology), (b) management (the enforcement), and (c) workers (the human). To recognize technostress, four distinguishing features of technostress are of relevance:
- Tech-overload it occurs when being forced to deal with what is known as Big Data,
- Tech-complexity this is the Uber-complexity of artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems,
- Tech-uncertainty it often results from despotic management and unreliable IT, and finally,
- Tech-subjugation this is the techno-invasion as enforced by despotic-toxic management.
On the workers’ side of the equation, this leads to stress caused by a managerially enforced human-adjusted-to-machine interaction in which workers are seen by management as a tool to be bent to a machine or, for example, an algorithmic system.
This causes stress because of the management organized machine-human interface. Management makes all this much worse by also using and misusing new technologies for technology-related workplace surveillance purposes.
Under the ever-increasing digitalization of work, it is not at all surprising to see that many employees are affected by technostress. Yet, there are also marked differences depending on which techno-stressor has manifested more than the others.
For example, workers with more complex work activities seem to be confronted with technostress more often than those with less complex responsibilities.
In other words, the managerially set work task and the concrete technical systems that is used (e.g. algorithmic system) are highly relevant for this.
The more complex activities are accompanied by a larger amount of information to be processed, the more technostress is likely to occur. Therefore, the risk of information overload increases as the level of information to be processed rises.
It is also the case when more complex algorithmic systems are used for more complex work tasks. These, in turn, can be more “error-prone” than standard IT systems.
Worse, an IT-illiterate management maybe more likely to blame workers rather than the algorithmic system they themselves fail to understand.
Whether with or without despotic management and in particular, in the absence of the protective shield of trade unions and sufficient labor laws and regulations, technostress will only rise in scope and intensity in the coming years.
All in all, five “technostressors” are adversely related to the mental health of employees. These five managerially induced technostressors are:
1. Tech-overload: the managerially enforced use of technologies commands workers to do more work and faster.
2. Tech-invasion: this occurs when workers are mandated to be constantly connected – to be reachable 24/7.
3. Tech-complexity: constant changes of an IT-system forces workers to spend lots of time updating their IT skills.
4. Tech-insecurity: workers are threatened with losing their jobs to those who better understand new IT systems.
5. Tech-uncertainty: continuous techno-managerial change makes workers feel their knowledge is outdated.
These five types of management-introduced “technostressors” are also relevant to the link between technostress and burnout. Beyond that, there are also clear correlations between information overload and technology-related disorders and corporate pathologies such as bias, bullying, discrimination, etc.
For example, the more frequent workers experience techno-disorders like information overload combined with an Uber-demanding management, the more burnout symptoms can be seen.
The experience of unreliable technology used by management and an increasing amount of information workers are forced to deal with also contributes to work-related stress and harms the psychological well-being of workers.
On the other hand, the functioning – and “not” functioning – of a new technique might be more relevant to the well-being of workers rather than a more profound understanding of the inner workings of a technical process (e.g. mathematical algorithms).
Meanwhile, it seems as if technology, as introduced by management, is all too often seen as a “tool” that isn’t questioned by many workers. In other words, management’s self-assumed right to manage has made an impact.
Seemingly, workers appear to accept management’s authoritarian command. This is an important ideological achievement that secures the unchallenged presence of evil companies, toxic managers, and, ultimately, destructive capitalism.
In the end, management’s digital world is generating ever new and ever more sources of work-related stress like technostress. Overall technical unreliability – the not working IR systems – remains a major factor for technostress.
With the widespread occurrence of technostress in mind, the safeguarding of workers’ mental health needs strong workplace trade unions to force management into creating a healthier work environment.
Trade unions can force management to provide reliable engineering and technical support systems that center on the human rather than profits.
Trade unions could also assure that workers are given sufficient time to learn new IT systems and programs. This alone will reduce technostress. Especially with the introduction of new technologies such as, for example, algorithmic systems, the risk of organizational disruptions is growing.
Simultaneously, workers are also experiencing increased work intensification when new system like algorithmic systems are introduced. All too often, these are not introduced “for” workers but for profits.
The eternal managerial quest for corporate profits – now framed as “shareholder values” – also leads to technostress. In the end, technostress might boil down to what Chomsky calls “profit over people”.
Photo: (source: Pixabay)
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