Working on mobile devices from home may affect family life
Too much office workloadIJ Do not bring it home as it might spoil the intimacy you share with your partner and affect your professional life too, warns a new study.
According to the researchers, using a mobile device at home for work purposes has negative implications for the employee’s work life and also on the spouse. “There are plenty of research that have been performed on technology and how it effects employees. We wanted to see if this technology-use carried back home would effect the spouse negatively,” said co-author of the study, Wayne Crawford, assistant professor at University of Texas at Arlington.
For the study, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, researchers surveyed 344 married couples. All the participants were full-time workers and used mobile devices or tablets at home for their work purposes.
The survey results showed that use of a mobile device during family time resulted in lower job satisfaction which in turn lowered their job performance.“It’s really no surprise that conflict is created when a spouse is using a mobile device at home engaged in work activities during family time. What that ultimately leads to is trouble at work for both,” the researcher said. “So, whether companies care or don’t about employees being plugged in, these firms need to know that the relationship tension created by their interaction with their employees during non-work hours which ultimately leads to work-life trouble,” the researcher added.