{"id":5366,"date":"2024-09-11T09:00:05","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T07:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/?p=5366"},"modified":"2025-01-31T08:55:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T06:55:17","slug":"5-symptoms-of-an-unhealthy-digital-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/11\/5-symptoms-of-an-unhealthy-digital-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Symptoms of an Unhealthy Digital Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s face it: We\u2019re more glued to our phones than ever.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We bring our devices to the dinner table, reply to emails during movies, and feel our palms get clammy when the Wi-Fi signal disappears for a minute. While it\u2019s easy to point fingers, blaming bad habits or lack of self-control, the real problem could be staring us in the face\u2026<\/p>\n

What if our current digital norms are not individual-specific, but more systemic? What if they\u2019re actually ingrained in the way we work and interact in our professional lives?<\/p>\n

Here are five symptoms of an unhealthy digital culture:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1. Always-on mentality<\/strong><\/h6>\n

It\u2019s 10pm and you\u2019ve just settled in for some well-deserved Netflix. Suddenly an \u2018urgent\u2019 work email bursts your bubble. And then comes the text, \u201cI just sent you an email. Don\u2019t read it until tomorrow.\u201d Uh, no. That\u2019s like giving your toddler a chocolate bar with their dinner and saying, \u201cDon\u2019t eat the Kit-Kat until you\u2019ve finished your food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Granted, employees don\u2019t have <\/em>to read or respond to late-night communiques, but most feel obligated to do so. And sending comms at all hours may well indicate an underlying lack of respect for work-life boundaries.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. Communication overload<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Ever had a colleague, manager or boss send you an email, followed by a Teams message and then a phone call, just to \u201cmake sure you got the email\u201d?<\/p>\n

It can be exhausting for employees to manage multiple communication channels \u2013 especially without any guidelines. Unless you want to drown your people in a sea of messages, and have all sorts of things fall through all sorts of cracks, pick your top two comms platforms and stick to them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. The name, not the face<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Digital communication makes remote work settings possible, but be careful not to lean too heavily on texts and emails. If your team rarely meets in person or on video calls, the absent face-time can lead to isolation or disconnection from the company and its culture.<\/p>\n

Encourage frequent face-to-face interactions or have a camera-on rule for virtual meetings, so that employees can connect to something other than a name, some initials or an avatar.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4. Digital zombies<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Find yourself looking at your phone during meetings? Known to sit at the back of conferences, gatherings and talks, with your laptop open and your eyes busy? (Ho-hum. I confess. This is literally me. – Stef) This habit is a classic sign of a) a short attention span and b) an inability to disconnect from the digital world.<\/p>\n

Before you label it \u201cmulti-tasking\u201d, it\u2019s not. It\u2019s divided attention, plain and simple.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5. Urgency avalanche<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Not everything can be equally urgent. When you treat every task, no matter how minor, as a priority, your people won\u2019t know how to prioritise anything. A constant sense of urgency creates a stressful environment where employees feel they must remain on high alert. This may sound wonderful in a fast-paced industry but, over time, employees give in to decision fatigue and the quality of their work and attitude often declines as a result.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you want to prioritise something, prioritise digital wellbeing.<\/strong><\/h6>\n

No one has ever had a professional epiphany while scrolling through Slack notifications. The optimal workplace culture, in 2024, is one where unplugging is just as celebrated as meeting a deadline; where ‘always-on’ transforms into ‘occasionally-off’. Because, in the end, a healthy work environment isn\u2019t measured by the number of emails sent at midnight, but by the number of smiles during the day. Cheesy, yes. True: also yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s face it: We\u2019re more glued to our phones than ever. We bring our devices to the dinner table, reply to emails during movies, and feel our palms get clammy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,92,82,90,80],"class_list":["post-5366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-workplace-culture","tag-corporate-culture","tag-employee-engagement","tag-organisational-culture","tag-unwritten-ground-rules","tag-workplace-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5366"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5369,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366\/revisions\/5369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}