Swedish social workers’ experiences of technostress

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.

KEYWORDS:

• technostress
• stress
• social work
• digitalization
• work environment

Introduction

This article examines the factors explaining whether or not Swedish social workers experience technostress, and highlights examples of situations when social workers experience it. Technostress was first conceptualized in the mid-1980s by Craig Brod (1984) in his book Technostress: The Human Cost of the Computer Revolution, where it was described as a ‘modern disease of adaptation caused by an inability to cope with the new computer technologies in a healthy manner’ (Brod 1984, 16). According to Brod (1984), the primary symptom of technostress was anxiety that manifested itself via, for example, headaches, bad temper, difficulty sleeping, and resistance to learning. Since then, there have been many attempts to define what technostress is and studies into what triggers it, its consequences, and how work organizations and employees can cope with it (i.e. Brivio et al. 2018; Hsiao, Shu, and Huang 2017; Hwang and Cha 2018; Krishnan 2017; Magno Marchiori, Wagner Mainardes, and Gouveia Rodrigues 2019; Tams, Thatcher, and Grover 2018; Tarafdar et al. 2007; Tarafdar, Cooper, and Stich 2019). There is a significant amount of previous research on technostress in general, however, knowledge on how social workers experience of technostress is still limited.

This article focuses on Swedish social workers. In Sweden, as in many other countries, there is strong political pressure to increase digitalization in the public sector and social services. The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions¹ is proposing ‘smart public administration’ by using more digital tools. Around the world, both government and non-government social welfare agencies have invested in and implemented a range of different kinds of technologies (Gillingham 2018). There has been a focus on how what is referred to as welfare technology (Dahler 2018), e-services (Scaramuzzino 2019), and social media (Best, Manktelow, and Taylor 2016; Chan 2016) can be used within the field of social work. Many different types of technology have been introduced in social work during the past years, such as app-systems (Lee and Walsh 2016; Mackrill and Ørnbøll Kirkegaard 2019), online chat applications (Van de Luitgaarden and Van der Tier 2018), and service robots for seniors (Bedaf et al. 2018), e-applications (Scaramuzzino 2019), just to mention a few.

There has been general concern about how many of the total amount of work hours practitioners spend on different kinds of digital tools (Gillingham 2018), such as smartphones, PCs, laptops and tablets. Technology has been described as something that has both contributed to poor working conditions and as something that actually will solve many of the problems that social workers are facing (Scaramuzzino 2019), such as heavy documentation demands that can increase employees’ stress levels. For example, two of the main arguments for increased automation within social work highlighted in the literature are that it contributes by creating a better work environment and that it frees time for more value-creating tasks (Annergård and Mårtensson 2018; Scaramuzzino 2019).

Not only in Sweden, but also elsewhere, social work has increasingly been put forward as a high-risk profession when it comes to work-related stress (see Blomberg et al. 2015; Meeuwisse, Scaramuzzino, and Swärd 2011; Swedish Work Environment Authority 2018; Welander, Astvik, and Hellgren 2017). In Sweden, social work has the highest number of reported mental health disorders, often connected to high levels of job stress, and social workers are at high risk of being on sick leave (Afa Försäkring 2017). Social workers often find it difficult to manage the imbalance between work demands and resources (Astvik and Melin 2013) and there is a relationship between the high level of administrative tasks and high levels of job strain (Elofsson, Lundström, and Shanks 2016). Lyneborg and Damgaard (2018) find that administration leads to a bureaucracy spiral, where core values in social work, like meeting and helping clients, are given less time and attention (cf. also Hjärpe 2020).

When it comes to stress, the perception of time has been argued to be of great importance. Many social workers have to deal with a pressing time schedule and experience overload with an insufficient amount of available time. In fact, stress at work is one of the most common reasons why social workers quit their jobs or even leave the profession altogether. When it comes to social workers, time is not only important for the professional who performs a variety of different administrative tasks, but also in the relationship between the social worker and the service user (Olsson and Sundh 2019). Previous findings indicate that social workers’ attitudes towards service users also are related to the social workers’ level of job stress and thus can affect service users (Blomberg et al. 2015). In Sweden, there have been trials in the public sector of reduced working hours with retained full pay for social workers as a way to reduce job-stress (Barck-Holst et al. 2017, 2019). We argue that previous research on social workers has neglected the role of technology when it comes to work-related stress. As technology is profoundly changing social work, the relationship between technology and stress should be further explored.

This article explores Swedish social workers’ experiences of technostress by means of the following research questions:

1. What factors explain whether social workers experience technostress or not (e.g. gender, age, digital education, use of digital tools, digitalization of work tasks, working conditions)?

2. How do social workers experience technostress and what situations trigger it, in their experience?

This article draws on a web survey (N = 523) targeting Swedish social workers who are members of the Union for Professionals,² via a quantitative analysis of responses and a qualitative analysis of answers to an open-ended question. First, we will discuss a variety of understandings of technostress as they provide a deeper understanding of our dependent variable, i.e. whether social workers experience technostress or not.

Different understandings of technostress

It is difficult to distinguish between ‘general stress,’ ‘stress at work,’ and ‘technostress.’ However, several scholars argue that technostress is different from both ‘general stress’ and ‘stress at work’ (Brod 1984; Atanasoff and Venable 2017; Ayyagari, Grover, and Purvis 2011; Salanova, Llorens, and Cifre 2013; see also La Torre et al. 2019 for a systematic review of the definition, symptoms, and risks of technostress). Salanova, Llorens, and Cifre (2013, 2) write that ‘technostress is a specific type of stress related to the use of ICT, mostly resulting from the high speed at which technological change takes place’ and leads to a feeling of anxiety, inefficacy, scepticism, and mental fatigue (see also Atanasoff and Venable 2017). One high speed example is that of emails, which are easy to send and receive, and thus quickly can result in a ‘full inbox.’ Technostress is often something that adds to overall work overload and work stress, as it increases individuals’ stress levels (Atanasoff and Venable 2017; Ayyagari, Grover, and Purvis 2011). According to Sellberg and Susi (2014), most people who use technology at work at some point have felt frustrated or irritated with technology, however technostress is more than a temporarily negative feeling, it is rather built up over time.

Technostress has for example also been defined as ‘a reflection of one’s discomposure, fear, tenseness and anxiety when one is learning and using computer technology directly or indirectly, that ultimately ends in psychological and emotional repulsion and prevents one from further learning or using computer technology’ (Wang, Shu, and Tu 2008, 3004). Several scholars have also focused on ‘technostress creators,’ i.e. different factors that tend to create technostress (i.e. Hwang and Cha 2018; Krishnan 2017; Tarafdar et al. 2007, 2011) which we will come back to as they have also inspired this study. In addition, we found research on different coping strategies (e.g. Hauk, Göritz, and Krumm 2019). Other scholars have focused more on stress related to the use of a specific type of technology such as mobile apps (i.e. Hsiao, Shu, and Huang 2017) or social media (Brooks and Califf 2017). Technostress can also be different depending upon if it is work related or not (Salo, Pirkkalainen, and Koskelainen 2019).

Tarafdar, Cooper, and Stich (2019, 8) argue that: ‘the stress process provides a conceptual starting point for understanding technostress.’ Technostress as a concept, however, addresses the context in which the stress process occurs due to the use of technology. In fact:

Technostress is a process that includes (1) the presence of “technology environmental conditions”; which are appraised as (2) demands or “technostressors” that are taxing on the individual and require a change; which set into motion (3) “coping responses”; that lead to (4) psychological, physical, and behavioural “outcomes” for the individual availability of options and resources to respond to the stressful situation (Tarafdar, Cooper, and Stich 2019).

In a systematic review of different definitions of technostress, La Torre et al. (2019) find that the definition has changed over the years and that today many scholars conceptualize technostress as the user’s own experience of stress, when using a variety of different kinds of technologies.

In our study, we argue that it is meaningful to use the concept of technostress, even though it is closely related to, and perhaps sometimes difficult to distinguish from, ‘general job stress’ and ‘stress at work’ because the concept helps to highlight the role of technology when it comes to work-related stress. Similar to Tarafdar, Cooper, and Stich (2019), we assume that technostress addresses the context or situation in which the stress process occurs and, consistent with La Torre et al. (2019) findings, we focus on the social worker’s own experience of stress when using digital tools. In the web survey, we hence measure technostress as ‘stress caused by different types of technology, such as administrative programmes not working properly, a full inbox, and emails that I do not have time to answer.’ We will now further discuss the theoretical perspectives and the previous research that this article draws upon in identifying the possible factors explaining whether social workers experience technostress or not.

Theoretical perspectives and previous research

This article aims to contribute to two fields of research – research on technostress (see e.g. Brivio et al. 2018; Brooks and Califf 2017; Hauk, Göritz, and Krumm 2019; Tarafdar et al. 2007; Sellberg and Susi 2014; Stadin et al. 2021; Ragu-Nathan et al. 2008) and research on social workers’ working conditions (see e.g. Aronsson, Astvik, and Gustafsson 2014; Astvik and Melin 2013; Astvik, Melin, and Allvin 2014; Blomberg et al. 2015; Elofsson, Lundström, and Shanks 2016; Meeuwisse, Scaramuzzino, and Swärd 2011; Tham and Meagher 2009; Welander, Astvik, and Hellgren 2017).

Important factors

To answer our first research question, we need to identify possible factors that might contribute to explaining differences in social workers’ experiences of technostress. Based on our reading of previous research, we have chosen to focus on three sets of variables that might explain whether or not social workers experience technostress – a first set of individual background variables and two sets of contextual variables, such as work organization and working conditions. Previous research has focused on how different background variables such as gender, age, and education influence experiences of technostress (see Magno Hauk, Göritz, and Krumm 2019; Marchiori, Wagner Mainardes and Gouveia Rodrigues 2019). Therefore, it is important to consider these when analysing technostress.

Previous research has also highlighted contextual factors in the work organization (see e.g. Brooks and Califf 2017; Brivio et al. 2018; Hauk, Göritz, and Krumm 2019; Tarafdar et al. 2007; Ragu-Nathan et al. 2008). For example, a study showed that there are differences between non-intensive and intensive users of digital tools when it comes to factors that determine technostress (Salanova, Llorens, and Cifre 2013). The usability of the digital tools has also been put forward as important for determining whether stress is experienced or not (Sellberg and Susi 2014; Åborg 2002) as well as ‘techno-uncertainty,’ which refers to situations of constant and unpredictable changes and upgrades of technologies (Tarafdar et al. 2007).

Scholars have also focused on other contextual factors in working conditions. ‘Information overflow,’ for instance, is used to describe when there is too much information available or it is difficult to find the right information. Information overflow can contribute to stress as employees find it hard to distinguish between what is relevant and what is not. For example, sending and receiving emails is part of contemporary working life, and a full inbox can be stressful to deal with. Digitalization tends to speed up the work, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the constant flow of information (Soucek and Moser 2010; Åborg 2002). ‘Multitasking’ is when employees have to perform several work tasks simultaneously and continuously and can only give each task their partial attention, and this has also been highlighted as something that creates technostress (see e.g. Sellberg and Susi 2014). One factor is often called ‘techno-invasion’ and refers to situations where work and non-work domains tend to merge (Tarafdar et al. 2007), for example, when workers feel that they have to be available even during their leisure time (Atanasoff and Venable 2017). A Swedish study shows that both managers and staff within social services have difficulties with handling boundaries between work and personal life, and many argued that it is important to distinguish between these two domains to create a successful work-life balance (Svensson and Larsson 2017). In the analysis presented here, we will test the relevance of some of these variables for explaining whether social workers experience technostress or not.

Boundaryless work and invisible work

Our second research question focuses on how social workers experience technostress and what situations trigger it. Although previous research on technostress has focused on workers in various industries and professions in a variety of countries (see Salo, Pirkkalainen, and Koskelainen 2019 for a short overview), knowledge about Swedish social workers’ experiences of technostress is limited. Previous research shows that Swedish social workers experience increased levels of work-related stress due to a heavy workload, caused by greater documentation requirements and less time with the clients (see Blomberg et al. 2015; Meeuwisse, Scaramuzzino, and Swärd 2011; Scaramuzzino 2017; Scaramuzzino and Meeuwisse 2019; on digital documentation see also Jacobsson and Martinell Barfoed 2019; Martinell Barfoed 2019. This trend is well known in social work in other countries, for example, in Denmark (Lyneborg 2020), in England (White et al. 2010), Australia (Gillingham and Humphreys 2010), and the US (Baines 2006). Research on technostress has shown that the use of digital tools tends to add to existing job stress (see e.g. Atanasoff and Venable 2017).

To be able to understand and interpret the open-ended responses in the qualitative analysis, we also need some broader theoretical perspectives. Scholars have for example highlighted that rapid technological development has led to boundaryless work, with more flexible work arrangements and traditional boundaries between work and personal life becoming increasingly blurred (Campbell Clark 2000; Nippert-Eng 1996; Yeow 2014). In this new setting, workers have to take more responsibility for creating and maintaining the boundaries between these two spheres (work and personal life) (Allvin et al. 2006) and need to find strategies for boundary control (Mellner, Aronsson, and Kecklund 2014).

In addition, the concepts of visible and invisible work are used to shed light on how professions react to, and are affected by, technological change. Bowker and Star (1999) use the two concepts to visualize the trade-offs needed to live up to requirements from national guidelines, professional ethics, and negotiations between the parties involved (for example users of the services). What is regarded as ‘real work’ in a given profession is not stable over time and the use of technology tends to add what can be seen as invisible work. For example, it often takes a considerable amount of time to handle non-functioning computer systems, but is not regarded as a ‘part of the work’ (see Leigh Star and Strauss 1999), and hence creates technostress (see Åborg 2002). Because of administrative demands from national authorities, in many countries, less time is spent with service users (in England e.g. Munro 2004; in Canada Baines 2006; in Sweden Hjärpe 2020; in Denmark Lyneborg 2020; in the US Zelnick and Abramovitz 2020). We find that the definition of what is regarded as proper or ‘real’ work is dependent upon both time and context (Bowker and Star 1999).

Method and data: A web-survey among Swedish social workers

We will now discuss the data collection, the sample, and how the data has been analysed.

Data collection and sample

In October 2018, a web survey was sent out to a sample of 2,500 members of the Union for Professionals. The union had approximately 72,000 members, however, only social workers and people working with social work were included in the sample. The survey was announced two weeks in advance and then the Union sent an email with a link to the survey, followed by three reminders. Out of 2,500 emails, the total number of bounces was 111. The survey therefore reached 2,389 individuals. The questionnaire was answered by a total of 523 respondents, which was a response rate of approximately 22%. A drop-out analysis of the respondents was made by comparing the respondents to the Union’s members, based on members’ statistics in terms of gender, age, and employment sector (see Scaramuzzino 2019). See Table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of gender, age and employment sectors.

	Members of the Union for Professionals	Respondents in the web survey
	%	%
Gender
Women	86.2	87.3
Men	13.6	12.5
Non-binary	Not-applicable	0.2
Age
20–29	12.2	7.3
30–39	30.4	27.8
40–49	25.4	24.1
50–59	21.5	25.9
>60	10.5	14.9
Total	100	100
Employment sector
Municipality	68.3	75.1
County Council	10.2	11.9
Private	9.9	7.1
State	8.8	5.2
Civil Society	2.6	0.8
No information	0.3	Not-applicable
Total	100	100

Of all members of the Union for Professionals, 86% were women and 14% men; while among the respondents to the web survey, 87% were women and 13% men (0.2% stated non-binary, an alternative not present in the Union’s statistics). There is thus no major bias in terms of gender distribution. Regarding age distribution among the members of the Union for Professionals and respondents in the web survey, there is a minor bias. The two older age categories, social workers who are over 50, are slightly overrepresented in the web survey, and social workers under the age of 29 are slightly underrepresented. When it comes to the distribution between employment sectors, there is also a minor bias. In comparison with the Union for Professional’s member population, the share of social workers working in a municipality is larger among the respondents to the web survey. Among all the members, we also find a slightly larger share of social workers working in county councils and slightly smaller share working in the private sector, the state, and civil society, compared to the respondents (there was no information about approx. 0.3% of the union members when it comes to employment sector in the union’s statistics). Based on this drop-out analysis concerning three background variables (gender, age, and employment sector), we argue that the small biases in the composition of the respondent group do not impact the representativeness of the data.

Analysis

The analysis is divided into two parts addressing the two research questions. The first part is quantitative and starts with a discussion on the extent to which Swedish social workers experience technostress based on a question about the respondents’ experiences of technostress in their professional lives. The analysis then focuses on what factors explain whether social workers experience technostress (RQ1) by means of a binary logistic regression analysis. Experience of technostress was the dependent variable that we used to test differences in experiences. To be able to perform a binary logistic regression analysis, the variable was dichotomized by merging different alternatives as positive answers (‘often,’ ‘quite often,’ and ‘sometimes’) and negative answers (‘seldom’ and ‘never’). One disadvantage of this way of analysing the data is that it only measures whether social workers experience technostress or not, and not to what extent they experience it. Drawing on the theoretical perspective and previous research, we chose independent variables at both the individual level (background variables) and the organizational level, the latter of which includes both factual factors (work organization) and perceived factors (working conditions). See the factors, wording of the questions, and response alternatives in Table 2.

Table 2. Factors, wording, and response alternatives.

Factors	Wording	Response alternatives
Dependent variable
	I experience ‘technostress’ at work (i.e. stress caused by different types of technology, such as administrative programmes not working properly, a full inbox, and emails that I do not have time to answer).	‘often,’ ‘quite often,’ ‘sometimes,’ ‘seldom’ and ‘never.’
Background variables
Gender		‘female’ and ‘male’
Age		20–29, 30–39, 40–49, 50–59 (60+ ref.)
Digital education	Have you received any education to increase your digital competence? (e.g., e-health, e-social work, welfare technology, AI, social media, digital leadership, chats, video calls).	‘yes’ or ‘no’
Work organization
The use of digital tools (smartphone, PC, laptop, tablet)	How much do you use the following digital tools at your work during an average day?	‘don’t use,’ ‘less than 1 hour,’ ‘1–2 hours,’ ‘3–4 hours,’ or ‘5 hours or more’
Digitalization of work tasks	To what extent are the following work tasks digitized at your workplace? administration (e.g. book meetings, investigation, documentation, handling of cases), contact/communication (e.g. with clients, service users, patients, pupils, students, relatives) and meetings (e.g. with colleagues, management, coordinated individual plan, student health team, teachers, scientists).	‘to a large degree,’ ‘to some degree,’ ‘to a low degree,’ “to a very low degree’ and “I don’t know/none’
Working conditions
Too much workload	I have too great a workload	‘often,’ ‘quite often,’ ‘sometimes,’ “seldom’ and ‘never’
Job-stress	I feel stressed at work.
Expectations to be available in leisure time	I feel that there are expectations that I will be available during my leisure time (e.g. that I should read and respond to work messages).
Collegial support	I receive help, support, and encouragement from my colleagues when I encounter problems.

The second part of the analysis is qualitative and explores how social workers experience technostress by using open-ended responses as empirical material, (RQ2). To give the respondents the opportunity to explain their previous answers, and to give examples of situations that trigger technostress, the following open-ended question was asked in the survey: If you are experiencing technostress, what does the technostress mainly consist of? This question generated as many as 258 open-ended responses, which constituted almost 50% of the respondents in the survey. Some of the answers are short, consisting of a couple of words while most of the answers consist of 1–2 sentences, in total 360 sentences are given. The fact that we gave two examples of what might cause technostress (administrative programmes not working properly and a full inbox) might have affected the respondents’ answers. However, such examples were needed to give the respondents an idea of what we meant by technostress. Using a qualitative approach, the answers were coded thematically, where patterns as well as variations were highlighted and related to the results from the survey (Silverman 2016). Answers that shed light on different aspects of techno stressors in everyday social work were given precedence.

Factors explaining whether social workers experience technostress or not

All of the respondents stated in the questionnaire that they used digital tools in their work and hence were potentially exposed to technostress as we had defined it. Table 3 shows the frequency of technostress among the respondents.

Table 3. The frequency of technostress.

	Technostress (%)
Often	12.8
Quite often	21.7
Sometimes	28.5
Seldom	28.3
Never	8.7
Total N.	516

Approximately one-third of the social workers experienced technostress either often or quite often and about 3 in 5 social workers (63%) experienced technostress often, quite often, or sometimes. Only about 9% of the respondents never experienced stress caused by technology. The overall picture shows that a majority of the social workers experienced different degrees of technostress.

To answer our first research question, we analysed what factors explain whether or not social workers experience technostress through a binary logistic regression analysis as described in the method section. Table 4 shows the correlation between technostress and the actual and perceived factors.

Table 4. Correlations between technostress and factual and perceived factors.

	Technostress (often, quite often, or sometimes)
	Standard Error	Exp(B) (odds ratio)
Background variables
Gender (male ref.)	0.383	0.901
Age 20–29 (60+ ref.)	0.546	0.855
Age 30–39 (60+ ref.)	0.416	0.526
Age 40–49 (60+ ref.)	0.431	0.459†
Age 50–59 (60+ ref.)	0.445	1.099
Digital education (no education ref.)	0.379	1.158
Work organization
Use of smartphone (no use ref.)	0.397	1.387
Use of PC (no use ref.)	0.290	1.627†
Use of laptop (no use ref.)	0.287	1.879*
Use of tablet (no use ref.)	0.398	1.009
Digitalization of administration (low degree or none ref.)	0.323	1.074
Digitalization of communication (low degree or none ref.)	0.254	0.919
Digitalization of meetings (low degree or none ref.)	0.267	0.690
Working conditions (experienced)
Too great a workload (seldom/never ref.)	0.399	3.032**
Job stress (seldom/never ref.)	0.339	5.842***
Expectations to be available during one’s leisure time (seldom/never ref.)	0.320	1.897*
Collegial support (seldom/never ref.)	0.736	0.164*
Constant	0.997	0.508
Observations	415
Nagelkerke R square	0.266

† = 10% * = 5%, ** = 1%, and *** = 0.1% significance

First of all, we can see that the regression model explains more than 25% of the variation of the dependent variable (Nagelkerke R square 0.266), i.e. whether the respondents had experienced technostress (often, quite often, or sometimes) or not. If we look at the independent variables, unlike many previous studies (see e.g. Hauk, Göritz, and Krumm 2019; Tams, Thatcher, and Grover 2018), we found almost no correlation regarding either gender or age. One possible exception is that social workers between the ages of 40 and 49 seem less likely to experience technostress compared to their older colleagues (odds ratio 0.459). The results also show that the use of both laptops (odds ratio 1.879) and PCs (odds ratio 1.627) make it more likely for social workers to experience technostress.

The analysis also clearly shows that the perceived factors had stronger correlations with our dependent variable than the factual factors when it comes to explaining whether social workers experience technostress or not. In fact, we found correlations between technostress and all the working condition variables experienced. Social workers who experienced general job stress were more likely to experience technostress (odds ratio 5.842), which is not so surprising. Also, an excessive workload (odds ratio 3.032) seems to explain why so many social workers perceived technostress (see Atanasoff and Venable 2017; Ayyagari, Grover, and Purvis 2011). There was also a correlation between technostress and the expectation of being available during one’s leisure time (odds ratio 1.897). This can be connected to the concept of a ‘techno-invasion’ highlighted in previous research (see e.g. Brooks and Califf 2017), which also in this study appeared to be an important factor for whether social workers experience technostress or not. An important factor that instead reduced the odds of perceiving technostress was the support of colleagues (odds ratio 3.032). This can be interpreted as the support of colleagues reducing technostress because social workers might not feel that they have to deal with the technology on their own.

Dimensions of stress among social workers

We will now present a qualitative analysis of the social workers’ answers to an open-ended question (N. 258). The respondents did not comment on background characteristics, such as gender. Only in a few cases was age mentioned as a problem, and instead contextual situations were commented on. We found the following themes: Malfunctioning technology, technology creates duplication of work, email “bombing” and information overflow, blurred boundaries create technostress, and form vs. content. In all these themes, time management is important (see Olsson and Sundh 2019).

Malfunctioning technology

A critique of how digital work is organized and implemented was found in the open-ended answers, for example, problems with malfunctioning technology, for example systems or software, old computers, or incompatibilities between systems. This was often expressed briefly as ‘Technology doesn’t work properly,’ ‘Old computers,’ or ‘The computer just stops or is lagging.’ Computer systems not meeting the needs of social work was another common type of comment. In line with what previous research has highlighted, quite a few respondents expressed that the digital tools were not user-friendly (see Sellberg and Susi 2014; Åborg 2002). Some respondents also addressed the consequences:

A difficult filing system takes time from patient work, for example, a lot of “blips” just to send a call. Unclear where information and documents are supposed to be filled out [on the computer], poor search functions. Three different places to reserve a room …

Typical for these answers were issues regarding time and technostress. Reporting statistics, waiting for updates or IT support during office hours while having clients waiting, create stress – and this is well-known from studies about digital documentation in social work (Baines 2006; Gillingham and Humphreys 2010; White et al. 2010; Jacobsson and Martinell Barfoed 2019).

Technology creates duplication of work

One significant consequence of the technical problems mentioned above is duplication of work. The social workers gave examples of how technology in various ways demands attention: ‘Sometimes notes and texts in investigations disappear even though you have saved them, which means you have to do it all over again.’ The frustration over technostress was often connected to time-management issues: ‘When calendars are not synchronized, you have to fill in two places’ or ‘Documentation is web-based and client contacts are cloud-based,’ leading to increased workloads and the need for multitasking (Sellberg and Susi 2014). The result of the expanding workload due to the digital changes is that daily tasks not only increase, but become invisible (Leigh Star and Strauss 1999) and become something to be done on top of other assignments, adding up to technostress. Here is an example of an open-ended answer:

Clients call the contact centre, who sends me a notification, I get a message that I am requested. Clients leave a message in an e-application that I cannot answer [the function does not exist]. I have to chase the clients on the phone or email. Clients ask for information in an email, which I cannot give because of confidentiality, so I have to chase them on the phone.

On the one hand, the duplication of work is time-consuming. On the other hand, the invisibility of the work being done because of malfunctioning digital solutions adds to a general feeling of frustration and technostress. In addition, the focus on paperwork distances the social worker from a core value in social work. In order to make solid interventions, a certain amount of time to meet the client is necessary to develop a rapport (e.g. Trevithick, 2012). The duplication of work takes time from clients and instead builds up stress caused by technology.

Email ‘bombing’ and information overflow

The answers to the open-ended question showed that the individual social worker has to deal with some unexpected consequences imposed by the organization (see Tarafdar et al. 2011). Complaints about information overflow (Åborg 2002) were frequent in the free text answers, for example, ‘email bombing,’ irrelevant emails, not having the time to read email, and poor filing systems for incoming messages. A heavy workload, in combination with digital malfunctioning, and a lack of support for digitized work, was found in many answers, often with strong expressions: ‘Email messages roll in with rocket speed.’ One complicating factor mentioned in the answers was a lack of digital education, which affects work: ’Not knowing how to do things and where to find the help I need/…/makes me feel stupid’ and another was the consequences of not knowing: ‘Can I trust the system when I need it the most?’ (see techno-uncertainty Tarafdar et al. 2007).

Another problem raised by this pressure was confidentiality; social work is a profession where trust is important on an individual level, but it is also a legal requirement: ‘Incoming emails [regarding clients] must be printed-out, journaled, filed, and answered by telephone because of confidentiality. [It is] time-consuming and hard to catch up with.’ Time and stress are, as we found, also interwoven in this category: ‘Beeping or vibrating phones during meetings or collegial talks – I become less focused and irritated because of the priorities.’

Blurred boundaries create technostress

Technostress becomes a burden on top of a high workload, and blurred boundaries where the social worker is constantly interrupted are stressful. Expectations to be available at any time create the stress: ‘Not catching up, people expect immediate answers. [They] cannot wait.’ Work becomes boundaryless, but social work seems to be poorly prepared for working outside office hours: ‘Portable solutions are totally missing at work. In addition, solutions to do digital work out of the office are missing, making work ineffective.’ Even though technology is opening up new ways of working, giving social workers and service users more options, when support systems for this new kind of work are lacking, the social worker cannot fully adjust to, and take advantage of, the possibilities given by new technology. A social worker says:

It is old-fashioned expecting everybody to be at the office 8:30-5 instead of seeing that sometimes work can be done at another place, for example at home. Even though I am a leader, addressing these questions and changing ways of working is difficult.

However, it is also a question of form versus content.

Form vs. content

The attention mentioned earlier, that new technology draws, also has other consequences. Not only is a lot of time and attention needed to cope with functioning as well as malfunctioning systems, the form itself is changing the work. A social worker explains:

It is important that employers understand the energy that is wasted on bad digital social work. Even though social media is not used very much where I work, you are hugely affected by the systems that are supposed to be helpful. The systems are steering what kind of work you are doing, instead of the opposite (italics added).

When the form takes energy, the focus is turned away from core values in social work, for example working close to the service user. The social worker in the example gives away power to technology. This raises questions about to what extent social workers are included in the process when digital tools are developed and implemented.

Summary and conclusions

Many studies on technostress are quantitative (see e.g. Brooks and Califf 2017; Hwang and Cha 2018; see e.g. Sellberg and Susi 2014 for exception). By using a multi-method approach, this article examines both the factors explaining whether social workers experience technostress or not and provides several examples of situations when Swedish social workers experienced technostress. The prior knowledge on social workers’ experience of technostress is limited. The findings in this study indicate that approximately one-third of social workers experienced technostress either often or quite often. Malfunctioning technology, duplication of work, email ‘bombs’, information overload, and the fact that technology tends to set the terms for social work (instead of the opposite), were some of the examples of situations when Swedish social workers experience technostress. Similar to the results found by Olsson and Sundh (2019), we found in our open-ended responses that the perception of time in relation to work is important, and we suggest that these time aspects should be investigated further.

Social workers are also more likely to experience stress when the boundaries between work and non-work domains are blurred. These results are interesting in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand people in Sweden, are advised to work from home and use more digital tools, for example, digital meetings. On the other hand, from a public health and work environment perspective, this could be problematic, considering that based on the results shown in this study, social workers might experience more technostress if they have to take their work home with them. Especially if this becomes a long-lasting situation.

All in all, our results have provided insights into how social workers experience technostress. However, there is a clear need for further research on the relationship between ‘general stress,’ ‘stress at work,’ and ‘technostress,’ to be able to find out more about the extent to which the stress social workers experience at work is related to the use of technology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare [2017-01153].

Notes

1. The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions is an employers’ organization, which represents and advocates for Swedish local government in dialogue with the Swedish Parliament, the EU, and others. All Swedish municipalities and regions are members of this organization (https://skr.se/tjanster/englishpages.411.html).

2. Akademikerförbundet SSR