Technostress

PTSD. Burnout. Depression. That’s what you get from a too stressful workplace. And — employers take note — you also get reduced commitment to work, and much higher costs.

As workplaces have navigated the COVID pandemic, new technologies have amped those stresses to 11. Bossware. Tattleware. After-hours nastiness on Slack. Now there’s a whole different kind of “technostress” wearing on warehouse and retail workers, whose every movement is tracked and rated by algorithms.

Researchers are only beginning to study the impact “technostress” has on workers, from toxic interpersonal relationships to “email apnea” Tech is here to stay — but how can we foster healthier, less “technostress”-inducing work cultures?

The podcast is a partnership of New America and Slate, and sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Subscribe to get all the new episodes on Slate, Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts

Guests

• Roxanne Felig, doctoral student at the University of South Florida, who was cyber bullied online after publishing her first major research paper — and publicizing it on TikTok.
• Adrian Ugalde, retail worker at a big box store in LA
• Maddie Swenson, who quit her remote job as a creative director because of the stress of being monitored with Bossware.
• Ashley Nixon, Associate Professor of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior at Willamette University.