The “Always On” Culture in Modern Work - Part 1

From the outside, being always connected might seem convenient or even empowering. But inside our minds, it often triggers a storm of stressors. Constant connectivity can take a serious toll on mental and emotional health, contributing to anxiety, exhaustion, and a sense of overload. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as “technostress” – the pressure and strain that arise from our relationship with technology (Source: PMC). In an always-on culture, several specific forms of digital stress tend to emerge:

• Information Overload and Fear of Missing Out (FoMO): We live in an age of information abundance – emails, Slack messages, project updates, industry news, social media feeds – and trying to keep up with it all can be overwhelming. Recent research highlights how damaging this overload can be. In a 2024 study, University of Nottingham researchers found that employees who felt inundated by information and worried about missing important updates were significantly more likely to experience heightened stress and eventual burnout (Source: phys.org). In other words, the fear of missing out on something (FoMO) in the digital workplace can make people anxious and unable to unplug. Ironically, the more we try not to miss anything, the more we risk our mental well-being. One reason is cognitive bandwidth: our brains can only process so much input. When dozens of unread messages pile up, it creates a mental burden – a nagging feeling that we’re always behind. Over time, this contributes to chronic stress and fatigue.
• Constant Interruptions and “Ping” Anxiety: Another hallmark of the always-on culture is the constant stream of beeps, calls, and pop-up notifications. These constant interruptions might seem minor, but they fragment our attention and induce stress. Research has shown that frequent digital interruptions lead to elevated stress, frustration, and even more errors in our work. For example, informatics expert Dr. Gloria Mark found that when workers are frequently interrupted (say, by message alerts or email notifications), their error rates double and fatigue and anxiety levels shoot up (Source). Think about it: if you’re coding or writing a report and your chat app keeps flashing, you’re forced to context-switch repeatedly. This diminishes concentration and creates a mental state of vigilance – you start bracing yourself for the next interruption. Over time, this can manifest as what some call “notification anxiety”, where your brain is constantly on edge, expecting the next ping. A 2024 work-life report put it succinctly: constant task-switching and digital distractions can lead directly to burnout and anxiety (Source: Deloitte Insights). We end up exhausted not just from doing work, but from managing the chaotic way it’s coming at us.
• Social Comparison and Digital Pressure: Beyond information and interruptions, the digital world introduces a more subtle stressor: social comparison. This is especially true on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, or even internal workplace chats where people share achievements and project wins. When you’re always online, you’re always seeing highlights of others’ successes – the colleague who responded to the client at midnight or the peer who is posting code contributions over the weekend. It’s easy to slip into comparing yourself with these idealized images of productivity. Studies have linked such upward social comparisons on professional networks to negative emotions. For instance, a 2021 study in Frontiers in Psychology showed that seeing others’ positive career posts each day can lead to feelings of career frustration through social comparison (Source: Frontiers). Essentially, if everyone else seems to be hustling 24/7, you start feeling inadequate or anxious that you’re not measuring up. Similarly, an academic review in 2023 noted that even on LinkedIn (a professional SNS), users can experience depression or anxiety due to social comparison, just like on personal social media (Source). And it’s not only comparison – it’s also perception management. Some workers feel pressure to always be available, fearing that not responding immediately or appearing too busy could reflect poorly on their work. This can create a vicious cycle: everyone over-responds to prove their commitment, perpetuating the always-on norm.
• “Telepressure” and Inability to Detach: A concept gaining attention in occupational psychology is workplace telepressure – basically the urge or feeling of obligation to respond to work communications immediately, regardless of time. If you’ve ever felt your heart rate jump seeing a “?!” Slack from your boss on a weekend, you know the feeling. Telepressure is harmful because it prevents psychological detachment from work. We never mentally clock out. A recent study during the pandemic demonstrated this effect: employees who checked work email after hours had more emotional exhaustion, largely because they struggled to mentally disengage from work, and high telepressure made this worse (Source: PMC). In short, if you feel compelled to answer that email at 11 PM, you might calm the boss for the moment but at the cost of your own recovery time. Over weeks and months, this leads to cumulative burnout.

All these forms of digital stress – overload, interruptions, social comparison, telepressure – show how an always-on culture hits us on multiple psychological fronts. We become anxious about keeping up, stressed by constant stimuli, worried we’re falling short, and unable to turn off our work brain. The result? Often a mix of heightened anxiety, irritability, and feeling emotionally drained. One team of researchers dubbed these the “dark side” effects of the digital workplace, finding that information overload and FoMO in particular were especially detrimental to employee well-being (Source). The scary part is that these stresses feed on each other. Because you’re interrupted, you work longer to compensate, which exposes you to more info and more chances to compare with others, and so on.

However, understanding these dynamics is the first step to mitigating them. Next, we'll look at how the shift to hybrid and cross-time zone work adds another layer to this constant availability equation, and what we can do about it.

The move to hybrid and remote work has given many of us flexibility we never had before. We can work from our home office, a café, or even another country. But with this freedom comes new challenges – especially when your team is spread across different locations and time zones. Being “always on” takes on a literal meaning when somewhere in the world it’s always within someone’s working hours. How do you cope when half your team is just starting their day as you’re trying to end yours?

The blurring of boundaries is so problematic that in a recent survey of remote professionals, 27% identified “not being able to unplug” as their number-one struggle – far more than any other challenge in remote work (Source: Buffer). This finding illustrates a core issue in hybrid/global teams: when your home is your office and colleagues ping you from different time zones, it can feel impossible to truly sign off. You might finish your workday, but then a teammate in another country sends a request – and there’s pressure to answer because for them it’s work time. Many remote workers end up stretching their day late into the night to accommodate others, or waking up extra early to overlap with colleagues.

Working across multiple time zones can easily lead to what researchers call “time shifting” – employees adjusting or extending their work hours outside the normal 9-to-5 to communicate with far-flung coworkers (Source: Rice University). For example, you log back on at 9 PM to join a meeting with the team in Asia, or you respond to messages at 6 AM before the Europe team logs off. One study of a Fortune 100 company found this is common practice: when team members are distributed globally, they often work outside regular hours to “plug in” with others, and this time shifting negatively impacts work-life balance by eating into personal time (Source: Rice University). In short, people sacrifice their evenings, mornings, or weekends to keep projects moving across zones. While this may boost collaboration in the short run, it can also lead to burnout and stress if it becomes a constant expectation.
Hybrid work (where some people are in-office and others remote) presents its own twist on always-on pressure. Remote folks might feel an implicit need to prove they’re actually working – leading them to answer emails immediately, stay available on chat, and generally over-communicate their presence. On the flip side, office-based folks might feel pressure to handle extra after-hours calls to loop in remote teammates in different time zones. Without careful management, hybrid arrangements can inadvertently encourage a “never stop” mentality, as everyone tries to accommodate everyone else.

Asynchronous communication is often touted as a remedy for these challenges. This means collaborating on your own schedule – for instance, posting updates in a shared document or project board that colleagues can read and respond to during their hours, rather than expecting an instant reply. Embracing async work can relieve some always-on stress. It rids you of the expectation of an immediate response, which is huge for lowering anxiety (Source: Virtasant). Rather than chasing each other in real-time across time zones, team members can agree that, say, a 24-hour response time is acceptable for non-urgent matters. By valuing the quality of responses over immediacy, and deep work over instant ping-pong messaging, teams can reduce that sense of perpetual urgency (Source: Virtasant). For example, instead of a late-night “Are you available?!” text, a manager could leave a detailed message in a project thread that the employee answers the next morning – no sleep lost, and likely a more thoughtful answer given. Many remote teams now set explicit norms like: if it’s truly urgent, call my phone; otherwise, an email or task comment can wait till working hours. This not only prevents burnout, it often leads to better work.

Another strategy for global teams is to establish overlap windows – specific times of day when everyone is available for live collaboration – and stick to them. Outside those windows, people can focus on their tasks or personal life without expecting impromptu meetings. For instance, a team spread between London and San Francisco might agree on 3 hours of overlap each day. During that window they have meetings or Slack discussions; outside of it, they rely on async updates. This way, no one person has to always stretch their schedule to align with others; the burden is shared and contained. It’s also important for leaders to coordinate hand-offs across time zones rather than expecting one person to cover everything. Instead of a single engineer monitoring a system 24/7, perhaps the Asia team handles it during their day, then hands off to the Europe team, then to the US team, creating a follow-the-sun rotation. That removes the expectation that any one individual must be perpetually online.

Hybrid teams also benefit from clear communication norms. Without the cues of everyone being physically present 9-to-5, it helps to clarify things like response-time expectations, typical “online hours” for each member, and the difference between urgent and non-urgent communication. For example, a product manager might tell the team, “I generally don’t check Slack after 7 PM my time; if something is on fire later, text me directly.” When teammates know each other’s boundaries and schedules, they’re less likely to inadvertently push someone into overwork. It defuses that fear that “Oh, it’s 11 PM but I see my colleague online, maybe I should be too.”

In summary, hybrid and global work setups absolutely heighten the always-on dilemma, but they can be managed. The key challenges are dealing with time zone gaps and maintaining healthy boundaries when work and home occupy the same space. Solutions like asynchronous communication, defined overlap times, and explicit team norms can go a long way. Of course, it also requires a supportive culture – which brings us to our next topic: how to set boundaries and encourage digital wellness without jeopardizing your job or team relationships.

In this first part of our series, we've examined the nature of the 'always on' culture, its psychological impact, and the special challenges related to hybrid work and global connectivity. We've seen how constant digital availability creates various forms of stress—from information overload to telepressure and social comparison.
In the second part of this series, we'll focus on practical boundary-setting strategies, the effects of 'always on' culture on sleep, personal relationships, and productivity, as well as how corporate culture and technological solutions can both exacerbate and mitigate this problem. Don't miss the continuation to learn how to protect your well-being in the era of digital hyper-connectivity.