Virtual EI (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

4

The Endless Digital Workday

By Arjun Narayan, Rohan Narayana Murty, Rajath B. Das, and Scott Duke Kominers

Companies all over the world are redefining their vision of what it means to be “at work.” While digital technologies like email and smartphones have always blurred the distinction between being at work and being out of the office, for many white-collar workers, the pandemic eliminated any separation that might have remained.

To restore balance and sustain productivity, leaders need to reckon with exactly what happened to their employees’ work lives. Unlike with prior digital work technologies, which were typically adopted first either by the busiest executives (top-down) or by employees in field support, sales, or remote locations (