The Work Clinic

Ten years ago, I would have fretted about work while on holiday. These days, I prefer to make sure everything is ship-shape before I leave, then close the door on it until the end of the holidays. But it's no longer that simple.

Modern technology means that few of us are ever really incommunicado. There are two issues here - the rights and wrongs of contacting staff while on holiday, and the temptation of said staff to continue blogging and tweeting about work outside office hours.

I once got a call from a colleague while I was about to board a holiday flight to New York. I was bemused rather than annoyed - she felt it was preferable to call me than to bother someone more senior who was in the office. But it was about something very minor and I really feel that holidays are holidays - anything less than a matter of life and death should be dealt with by other staff.

As for tweeting and even checking e-mails, while I do occasionally succumb at the weekend, I make a point of avoiding this when on holiday. Even reading work e-mails renders a holiday null and void.

So, after 4 days free of work-related thoughts, you would assume that I am at my desk today fresh-faced and full of enthusiasm. Which I would be had the clanking of milk bottles at my front door not woken me at 4 am ...... Grrr. 

According to research by the University of Southern California's Brain and Creativity Institute, fast-paced modern media such as Twitter fail to give us the necessary time to reflect on either our own comments and actions or those of others.

Researchers used compelling, real-life stories to induce admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain, in 13 volunteers. They found that emotions linked to our moral sense awaken slowly in the mind - brain imaging showed that the volunteers needed six to eight seconds to fully respond.

The study inevitably raised questions about the emotional cost of heavy reliance on a rapid stream of news stories, as personified by Twitter. According to the university's Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, "If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people's psychological states and that would have implications for your morality." Immordino-Yang was keen to point out, however, that the blame lies not with social media per se, but the way in which it is used.

Hanna Damisio, co-director of the Institute, has voiced concerns about the juxtopositioning of good and bad news on sites such as Twitter, saying that it leads to an "indifference to the vision of human suffering."

Younger employees have grown up with social media. They are used to getting their information in rapidly-delivered soundbites, good and bad tidings together. They are very well informed. But are they good, rounded, people? Do they view colleagues with care and compassion? And if not, what should employers be doing to ensure that they do so?

Research conducted by free e-mail provider GMX has found that 1 in 3 Britons who use e-mail at work regularly become upset or offended due to misunderstanding what a colleague has written.

The survey of almost 2000 UK workers found that the most common cause for confusion is misinterpretation: in the past year alone, 41% of workers have received an e-mail from a colleague that has used an offensive tone, intentionally or otherwise.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, taking offence at misunderstood e-mails appears (along with so much else ,,,) to decline with age:

• 52% of workers aged 25-34 have taken offence at e-mails, compared to
• 39% between 45-54 years of age

I'm a bit sceptical about the validity of statistics like this. Do 45-year-olds even read their e-mails?! 

Best of all, and somewhat ridiculously, 71% of workers admitted to frequently becoming upset by having to wait for replies to their e-mails. Boo hoo!  

Not sure how accurate these stats are, or even where they originally came from, but they certainly provide some food for thought.

Every week seems to be national something or other week, and this is no exception - it's National Commute Smart Week.

A report by the catchily named Citrix GoToMyPC has found that British workers are wasting 4.6 million hours a day commuting. 62% of the 2,000 adults surveyed said that they wanted to reduce the time they spend travelling to and from work. Frustrations include being stuck in traffic (42%), issues with public transport (38%), travelling in the dark (36%) and cost (30%).

While part of me, on reading this, wishes that British workers would learn to whinge less, and part of me wonders why they haven't accepted that commuting is their lot in life, the [small] charitable part of me appreciates their concern.

This week's National Commute Smart Week has five themes:

1. Flexible working
2. Remote working
3. Virtual meetings
4. Health commute
5. Road congestion and road safety

If you're one of the whingeing workers - er, sorry, 'concerned commuters' - check out their website for suggestions and advice, including their Ten Top Tips for Smarter Commuting.

Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera, erstwhile critic of HR (when not being crowned HR journalist of the year), has put together a convincing argument for why microblogging site Twitter does not work as a corporate tool.

While I don't always agree with Sanghera's pronouncements, this time I think he has had a point. Here are his reasons for companies being unsuited to tweeting:

1. Twitters relies on people having real-time conversations. Companies are not built for swift responses.

2. Twitter restricts users to 140 characters per message. Big organisations just can't keep it short and sweet.

3. Twitter works because its users are open. Companies regard genuine transparency with equally genuine suspicion.

4. Twitter is altruistic and reciprocal. Businesses are not.

5. The best Twitter users have distinct personalities. Corporate drones do not.

And he's right! 

So much for us oldies whingeing about the amount of time youngsters 'waste' on social networking.

According to the National Literacy Trust, children who blog, text or us social networking have better writing skills than those who do not.

The organisation surveyed more than 3000 children aged between 9 and 16, and found:

• 24% had their own blog
• 82% sent text messages at least once a month
• 73% used instant messaging

But, encouragingly, 77% still write, mainly to do schoolwork.

National Literacy Trust director Jonathan Douglas told the BBC: "Our research suggests a strong correlation between kids using technology and wider patterns of reading and writing."

He added: "Engagement with online technology drives their enthusiasm for writing short stories, letters, song lyrics or diaries."

While this is all good stuff, there remains the worrying truth that not all children have access to computers, or indeed someone to encourage them to blog. It looks like fair access to the professions may have some way to go.