Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend the presentation of the 2025 edition of the state of the art of internal organizational transformation organized by Lecko, an event and, above all, a document that has for years been a must-read for anyone interested in the changes in working practices made possible by digital technology.
The document is substantial in size (and I can only advise you to download it), so I’m going to come back to it in a series of themed articles.
I’m not going to tell you that digital transformation has radically changed the way we work. In just a few years, we’ve gone from an organization based on physical interactions and structured communications to an uninterrupted flow of digital exchanges. While this evolution has brought unprecedented flexibility, it has also generated a major new problem: hyperconnectivity.
Today’s employees are over-solicited. With meeting after meeting, e-mails piling up and instant messaging demanding almost immediate responses, the cognitive load is exploding.
For many , it’s a foregone conclusion, like everything else that has to do with immaterial flows (The open space is not a factory but sometimes you should look at it that way and Eliyahu Goldratt’s fictional interview on infobesity and bottlenecks in knowledge work) but it doesn’t have to be that way, provided we take the necessary trouble. By analyzing its causes, understanding its consequences and taking concrete action, it’ s possible to regain control, and all the more so as businesses are no longer blind (Feedback and secondary data: how to put data at the service of employee experience?).
What’s interesting in this state of the art is that Lecko, thanks to its spin-off Gr33t, a platform that quantifies digital uses of the working environment to help develop better working practices through data, currently has data on the practices of 16,000 employees from a wide range of businesses.
Information overload is the norm
At the time of the presentation of the 2023 edition of the reference framework, I had already noted some alarming signs (Why your Digital Workplace is hurting your organization’s performance) and I didn’t expect to see things improve: we can multiply technologies galore and multiply them , but that won’t change the fact that we’re using them badly and don’t want to make any effort on the subject (Collaboration tools in the workplace: a real waste?).
In fact, when we talked to some of the participants, we shared our surprise at a common observation. Compared to what we saw some fifteen years ago , businesses are no longer reluctant to spend money on technology, but support systems are shrinking like a stone. A subject I’ll have to come back to in the future.
Unsurprisingly, the volume of digital exchanges has grown exponentially. Far from improving efficiency, the overabundance of information and solicitations disrupts concentration and destructures working days.
Here are a few observations:
- Solicitations outside normal working hours: 10% of employees exchange information outside working hours every other day. Among executives, this rate rises to 40%.
- Stacked meetings: when the weekly volume of meetings exceeds 20 hours, unplanned tasks can only be dealt with outside working hours.
- Systemic multitasking: the larger the meeting, the more other activities are carried out in parallel, particularly by videoconference.
- An explosion of chat and e-mail: while these communication tools enable fast interaction, they also create constant pressure and degrade the quality of attention.
As far as chat is concerned, we’ll have to talk about it again, because while we all agree that e-mail is the scourge of the workplace, I’m afraid that with chat we’ve given birth to a monster that’s harder to control , and which doesn’t replace e-mail, but rather adds to it.
Hyperconnectivity: a measurable impact
A study carried out on 16,000 users by Lecko and Cog’X (a neuroscience consultancy) shows that :
- Multitasking in meetings has become the norm.
- 40% of executives are permanently hyper-connected.
- An overload of meetings leads to an increase in multitasking, which in turn leads to an increase in off-hours work.
These data show that hyperconnection is not an individual issue, but a structural problem affecting all age groups and hierarchical levels.
A vicious circle of fatigue, inefficiency and environmental impact
It’s important to remember that hyperconnectivity is not limited to a specific category of employee. If we look at the panel of 16,000 users monitored by Lecko, we see that
- the hyper-connected (sending an email before 8am or after 8pm 9 days a month and attending 15 meetings a month outside the 8am-8pm time slot) represent 10% of the panel.
- the occasional hyperconnected , who interact occasionally outside working hours, account for 75%.
- the “reasoned”, who only interact during working hours, are only 15%.
Incidentally, I think Lecko was broad in defining working hours as the period from 8am to 8pm. If we confined ourselves to working hours stricto sensu, the figures would be even more alarming.
The first consequence of all this is a deterioration in mental and physical health.
The accumulation of demands and the multiplication of interruptions have a direct impact on employee health. 56% of employees experience increased fatigue after just two hours of successive video sessions. Constant pressure and lack of recovery time increase the risk of burnout.
The second is reduced efficiency and engagement.
Fragmentation of attention leads to a decline in the quality of work. Managers, in particular, find themselves struggling to mobilize their teams and deal with the unexpected. Most work is done in reaction, leading to a feeling of loss of control.
The third is an underestimated environmental impact.
The intensification of digital uses has a direct impact on the carbon footprint of businesses, with emissions rising by 30% a year.
More specifically:
? 15% are increasing their emissions by 0 to 30%.
? 20% increase their emissions by 30% to 100%.
? 40% double or more their emissions.
How can we regain control and combat hyperconnectivity?
If left unchecked, the situation could quickly spiral out of control, and the study suggests a number of runways for action.
First and foremost, digital tools need to be supervised by setting up user charters and reminding people of good practices to limit interruptions.
But example always comes from the top, and nothing can be achieved without a change in managerial culture. We need to stop glorifying reactivity and promote time management that respects individual rhythms.
It is essential to raise awareness and provide training, by informing employees of the consequences of hyperconnectivity and offering them concrete solutions for dealing with it.
We also need to re-examine the usefulness of meetings, encouraging shorter formats and limiting sessions where everyone’s presence is not essential.
Nothing can be done without measurement and objectives, and here we see the contribution of tools like Gr33t to this study, providing measures such as the number of days with out-of-hours interactions, the rate of multitasking in meetings, or the proportion of meetings held side by side.
Bottom line
Hyperconnectivity is a symptom of poor work organization, not an unavoidable fate. I would even go so far as to say that it is a toxic managerial choice.
If we want digital technology to remain a performance driver rather than a stress factor, we urgently need to regain control. Fewer unnecessary requests, more time to concentrate, better management of meetings: there are ways of transforming digital work into a tool at the service of employees, and not the other way round.
Image: hyper connectivity by mentalmind via Shutterstock.
