Swedish social workers’ experiences of technostress

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the factors explaining whether or not Swedish social workers experience technostress, and highlights examples of situations when social workers experience it. The article draws on a web survey (N = 523) via a quantitative analysis of responses and a qualitative analysis of answers to an open-ended question. Approximately one-third of social workers surveyed experienced technostress either often or quite often. The binary logistic regression analysis shows that technostress is mostly a question of social workers already exposed to high workloads and high levels of general job stress. Also, the feeling of not being able to leave the job at the end of the day correlates positively with technostress. Malfunctioning technology, duplication of work, email ‘bombs’, information overload, and the fact that technology tends to set the terms of the social work, instead of the opposite, were some of the examples of situations where Swedish social workers experienced technostress. These results suggest that technology risks add new ‘invisible’ work tasks that are time-consuming. One possible explanation why so many social workers experienced technostress is that the technology that has been implemented has increased the workload instead of decreasing it and that there is a lack of procedures, strategies, and sometimes even skills to manage the technology. The results provide useful insights for social work practice concerning how social workers experience technostress. Going forward, technostress as a working environment problem should be included in systematic management of the work environment.