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Computer Crashes Worse than a Break-Up

Source: The Scotsman

Publication date: 2000-08-29

COMPUTERS that break down at work cause more stress than the trauma of the end of a relationship, research claims. One in ten people find workplace computer failure, including data errors and e-mail viruses, more stressful than missing a holiday flight, while one in eight say it is worse than being left by their partner.

The report, compiled by an internet systems firm, highlights concerns about increasing levels of anxiety in the workplace.

Earlier this month, a study into working habits revealed the growth of "office rage", with problems such as high blood pressure, nervous tension and fatigue.

It suggested office technology had created an information overload, with company staff deluged by faxes, e-mails, mobile phone calls and photocopies.

The most recent research, carried out by ICL, involved a survey of office workers. Problems with computers were identified as the biggest single cause of stress, with one in four workers wasting between 30 minutes and one hour every day because of slow or unreliable technology.

Nearly half of those questioned said such problems delayed their work for between five and 30 minutes, and a third claimed they spent more than 30 minutes every week helping colleagues with computer glitches.

Many also said stress levels were deepened by technical support staff who were slow to respond to problems. While most agreed that internet access and e-mail facilities had allowed faster communication and access to information, 30 per cent claimed they waited more than two hours to have computers fixed.

Professor Cary Cooper, an expert on work-related stress, said anxieties had increased because of an over-reliance on computers.

"These results demonstrate the extent to which the computer has become a psychological umbilical cord connecting us to other people and documents in the business world," he said.

Dr Richard Graveling, of the Edinburgh-based Institute of Occupational Medicine, said problems in the workplace were nothing new, but that people were increasingly intolerant of poor equipment. "When you think about it, the conditions in which people worked at the turn of the century and the limitations of the tools and machinery with which they worked must have been pretty frustrating and stressful, but they had no choice but to just get on with the job," he said.

"They didn't enjoy any of the management procedures that currently exist where people can report faults with equipment or get something done about a problem in the workplace.

"People nowadays are much less tolerant of failures of technology, and tend to quickly get angry with things when they don't work as they should.

"Research that has been conducted in previous years has suggested that the levels of anxiety in the workplace have not increased, but there are different problems to deal with."

Dr Graveling said that computer technology had the potential to hinder workers as much as to help them.

"It works both ways. On the one hand computers give people more control over their lives and their working environment, but on the other it can place an extra load on them and problems can become very frustrating," he said.

A major report by the Health and Safety Executive published four years ago revealed stress in the workplace as one of the biggest reasons for absence through sickness, second only to serious bodily injury.

And research conducted earlier this month by the supermarket Tesco found that seemingly innocuous office problems, such as empty paper trays in the photocopier, were enough to trigger severe anger.

It conducted the study in an effort to find an explanation for a dramatic increase in daytime sales of headache pills and stress relief medicines in its stores.

Three-quarters of those surveyed said the problems were exacerbated by excessive coffee-drinking, leading to hyperactivity and high blood pressure.

The greatest number - about 85 per cent - said that problems such as computer system crashes were the biggest cause of stress.

A spokesman for Tesco said: "We live in an increasingly stressful age. It only takes the slightest thing to send blood levels soaring and for someone to lose their rag."

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-- D (SuperSSD@aol.com), August 29, 2000