Technology exists to improve our lives — to help us connect faster and create better. But we’ve reached a point where the always-on nature of technology is sabotaging workplace productivity.
Digital wellbeing is the concept that technology should be tuned to everyday life instead of dictating lifestyles. It promotes a healthy relationship between people and tools, which improves mental and physical wellbeing.
According to a recent HR.com report, 87% of businesses that invest in digital wellness, manage to retain existing employees. At a time when the skill gap is a major challenge for companies, you cannot risk losing your biggest asset.
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The connection between digital wellness and productivity
Employees are productive when they’re focused, engaged, and inspired to contribute. All of these 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, tired, and unmotivated.
Digital wellness creates strict and clear boundaries between work and life so people can wind down and relax within a calming 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 in the past few years. And it’s not simply because employees are lazy.
Gallup did a series of surveys on employee engagement and here are some key insights:
- Only 34% of U.S. employees think they have the correct tools to do their work right in 2024 — the lowest in a decade.
- Only 38% of U.S. employees feel they’re cared for at work in 2024 — the lowest in 11 years.
At a time when workplaces are integrated with hundreds of productivity tools, these numbers are surprising. Corporate wellness is not implemented the way employees prefer, costing companies $322 billion in employee burnout.
This is why we need to rethink digital wellness and how it can enhance work productivity.
Key components of digital wellness
With digital wellness, you can reclaim hours lost. It can be broken into three parts:
Physical health
How we feel physically, dictates how we operate. You should make the office as comfortable as possible for employees 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 encouraging employees to take stairs. Taking care of physical health also reduces preventive diseases, which saves thousands of dollars for businesses. Senior executives who lead by example see far more engaged employees.
Mental health
Work-induced stress is one of the key 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 relaxation areas, you 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 massive role in how engaged employees are. According to the Gallup study, employees who are acknowledged by others feel they belong to the organization. Frequent cross-team collaborations, recreational activities, and face-to-face meetings allow employees to be part of the social structure.
A lot of businesses only focus on one aspect of employee wellbeing, making the entire 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 make sure 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 can do it, of course, but only to a certain extent. That’s why you should be aware of context switching.
Context switching is the practice of switching between unrelated tasks and projects, which requires our brain to slow down and regain focus for the next task. The University of Irvine did seminal research on it and found that human brains start feeling stressed and tired after about 20 minutes of frequent interruptions. The always-on nature of technology which we thought to be the biggest aid to productivity, is killing it.
To make sure context switching and screen time do not stress out employees, allow them to perform digital detox. It includes having a fixed period to stay away from screens, organizing and reducing the number of technology being used, and enforcing “do not disturb” sessions to keep away distracting notifications. Digital hygiene works on all the key components we’ve discussed above so there’s no downside to screen-free breaks between work.
Online security measures
Digital hygiene at work can be extended to ensure devices and data within them are decluttered, safe, and organized. Security plays a big role in workplace productivity as 93% of security breaches lead to unplanned downtime and data loss.
Here are a few ways you can help employees scan attack surface and improve personal and professional security:
- Enforce 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 should also use password management apps, and multi-factor authentications (MFA) to add extra layers of security. Most cyberattacks are results of ignorance so employees must proactively keep their passwords and workflows secure.
- Regularly update software: When discussing the stress caused by frequent interruptions, we must also consider system notifications like updates and security patches. Many employees find these notifications irritating and often disregard them. However, these updates are crucial for enhancing system stability and addressing security vulnerabilities, including zero-day exploits. This is particularly important for VoIP security, as unsecured communication channels can be a significant risk. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure that all work devices are consistently updated with the latest patches and to encourage employees to install these updates promptly.
- Following secure browsing practices: Employees must tick off a few things while browsing the web. These include only opening URLs that start with “https”, using VPN and ad blockers to reduce tracking, verifying files before downloading, and using email and file management services that offer strong encryptions.
- Educating employees on phishing scams: If you want to be secure online, you need to have an eye to catch fraud. Thanks to 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 websites. These attacks often target victims who are not aware of the signs and fail to verify the information. Companies must train employees to detect phishing attempts and follow SOPs to resolve them. An identity theft protection plan can help as well.
Implementing digital wellness programs in the workplace
The good news about incorporating digital wellness is that you can implement just the foundational concepts and achieve most of the results. These include training, resources, and integration.
Here are some steps to do that:
Workshops and training sessions
There’s a disconnect between what digital wellness looks like for companies and how employees feel about it. Proper training can bridge that gap.
Start by training employees on the importance of corporate wellness and the various perks the company offers to them. With workshops, you can nurture employees’ social health and make them more aware of their colleagues and surroundings. These sessions are also 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 address the issues, and how to proactively stop technology from taking over their lives. Be it digital security or wellness programs, lack of awareness is the primary reason why workplace productivity has gotten worse in recent times — something that can be addressed with training.
Providing materials and tools
As highlighted previously, the Gallup report found that only one in three employees have the right tools to succeed at work. Solving that should be the next step.
As a business, you should offer ergonomic setups and subscriptions to wellness apps. Once employees learn how to block inappropriate content and limit screen time, they can feel the results.
Lack of right intent is one of the key reasons why companies fail at meaningful digital wellness programs. But a few companies have succeeded at this.
VoIP company RingCentral has “CaRing days”, a wellbeing program introduced after the pandemic. Employees can utilize CaRing days however they want — the goal is to unwind and be more present with people who matter. Thanks to 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 more and more employees are signing up to foster better relationships with colleagues and be part of something bigger. RingCentral’s holistic wellness programs give people flexibility, recognize hard work, and make employees more productive at work.
Corporate wellness programs work better 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 kind of gesture opened up conversations and encouraged the employees to take action.
At the height of the pandemic, Buffer introduced a 4-day work week to prioritize mental health and rest. It documented the journey and found that 91% of employees are more productive in a 4-day work week. Buffer is also a leader in the “unsick day” movement that dedicates one day to preventive care. Honest and intentional steps like these allow Buffer to build a healthy culture and reduce productivity loss.
Now that you have an idea about how to go about integrating digital wellness into your company, here are some tools that might help you:
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 ideal for remote teams and for managers looking to identify bottlenecks and automate admin tasks.
Headspace
Headspace is one of 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. One of the best features of Headspace is the ability to connect with friends as accountability partners, allowing everyone to improve their mental health.
You can also check out apps like Calm and Wellable for workplace digital wellness.
AdGuard
If you’re looking to cut down distractions while browsing at work, an ad blocker is a must. AdGuard is one of the most reliable and powerful browser extensions we’ve come across and it gets the job done. It works in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox so employees’ browsing habits are covered with it.
You can also check out AdBlock Plus, uBlock Origin, and Ghostery.
Internxt
Internxt is a perfect choice for online collaboration and productivity. This cloud storage service is a fantastic choice for any team concerned with protecting their work, as it lets to store and share files in complete privacy.
On top of their flagship features, Internxt developed free security tools to ensure data safety for teams, such as Temporary Email, Virus Scanner, Password Checker, Password Generator, File Converter and more to come next months.
ExpressVPN
If you want to protect office devices from cyberattacks, you cannot go wrong 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 might find cheaper alternatives in the market but make sure you’re not compromising on security.
If ExpressVPN doesn’t suit your use case, check out SurfShark, Mullvad, and TunnelBear.
BitWarden
A good password manager is as essential as any productivity tool today. If you follow best practices such as long and complex passwords and frequently changing them, an app like BitWarden will serve your employees well. It’s affordable and if you have the bandwidth you can host it by yourself.
In case you need extra features, you can check out 1Password and Dashlane.
Aura
Aura is a personal security and credit monitoring platform that aims to keep personal data safe. If you want to know how to protect yourself from identity theft and secure your family data, Aura will be of big help.
AI Tools
AI tools are revolutionizing productivity and digital wellness. For example, AI-powered video editing software can automate tasks such as generating transcripts and creating AI clips, which saves time and effort for creators. Additionally, AI writing assistants like Grammarly improve grammar and clarity in real-time, enhancing written communication. These tools not only boost productivity but also promote a healthier digital lifestyle by streamlining tasks and reducing mental load.
Challenges and considerations
Digital wellness might just be the answer to workplace productivity challenges but why are only a few companies implementing it? And more importantly, why are most companies failing at it?
The answer is corporate inertia. Corporate wellness is a cultural and behavioral shift more than a technological shift. Drastically changing how a workplace functions is not an easy task, but the downside of a stressful workplace is even worse.
If you’ve decided to help employees build a healthy relationship with technology, you must put meaningful efforts into it. Things like cost and vendor considerations will come up but you must look at the big picture. Instead of expenses, you have to treat it as an investment.
You might face resistance from employees as well. After all, you’re asking for drastic lifestyle changes. This is why training and workshops work. Expose people to the downsides of digital dependency, convince them of the value, and lead with examples to show how to go about it. Since we can’t go without technology these days, it becomes a balancing act. If companies start respecting the boundaries, employees might reconfigure their lifestyle too.
Conclusion
Existing wellness strategies lack personalization and intuitiveness. Considering the degree of changes, you might not see results immediately — but there’s always something to start with. If you follow the advice discussed above, you’ll be able to create a support system for employees, making them more eager to contribute to the company’s success.
Irina Maltseva is a Growth Lead at Aura and a Founder at ONSAAS. For the last seven years, she has been helping SaaS companies to grow their revenue with inbound marketing. At her previous company, Hunter, Irina helped 3M marketers to build business connections that matter. Now, at Aura, Irina is working on her mission to create a safer internet for everyone.
