Work dynamics have not been the same since the Covid-19 pandemic began: remote work became necessary to guarantee operations in companies. Therefore, it is not surprising that the use of digital devices has increased, creating the need to promote balanced use of these through actions and practices of digital well-being.
At the company level, digital well-being is key to improving the skills and abilities of employees, which helps to increase the organization’s competitiveness. Therefore, businesses are responsible for promoting holistic digital well-being among their employees as part of their efforts to drive human capital sustainability.
The shift to digital has accelerated dramatically. According to the Global Consumer Insights survey conducted by DoubleVerify, people have doubled the time they spend consuming digital content since the pandemic. On average, an adult spends almost 7 hours in front of their phone or device connected to the Internet, either for entertainment or work.
In the same sense, data from Google affirms that, on average, a person checks their mail or chat every six minutes. In addition to that, their time is dedicated to performing various tasks simultaneously during at least 40% of their day. These data speak of an evident saturation of tasks and the need to reduce them to have more focused employees with better resolution capacity.
Digital well-being is so relevant that even the World Health Organization (WHO) designed the Draft Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020–2025. In the report, the WHO emphasizes the strategic use of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence and big data analytics to design better self-care practices, promote healthy habits and even improve medical diagnoses.
Why is it important to promote digital well-being?
There are five benefits that businesses can obtain by promoting digital well-being among their employees:
More focused workers. As mentioned, using tools such as chatbots in areas such as customer service allows work teams to dedicate more time to the most complex tasks, thus eliminating the oversaturation of tasks and having more focused employees.
Increase talent retention. Promoting habits of digital well-being also impacts talent retention. For example, 40% of workers feel less likely to move to another place and change jobs if digital health is promoted in their company.
Increased commitment and motivation. Companies that generate permanent actions focused on the digital well-being of employees are also contributing to creating better work environments, which increases the dedication and motivation of the teams.
More efficient teams. AI-powered tools create more efficient companies. Using them to favor digital well-being generates better results, and work teams have elements to respond more quickly and assertively to any challenge.
Motivated and focused teams. Some apps, such as Focus To-Do, from Apple, use the Pomodoro Technique (method for managing tasks). It keeps users motivated and focused by organizing tasks and time efficiently. The application allows users to save and organize tasks in a to-do list, create reminders for major to-dos, monitor time spent on tasks, estimate workload, and design achievable goals.
