UK workers send and receive 10,000 emails a year
The average UK worker sends and receives 10,000 emails a year and one in ten spend the whole working day on a computer or mobile phone. That’s according to research by npower, which documents how electronic devices have transformed our working lives over the past 60 years.
The study, produced by Warwick Business School to support npower’s online archive ‘Remember How We Used To Work’, maps out our love of office gadgets through the years, from typewriters to telex, computers to smartphones, and shows just how reliant we have become on technology.
The findings reveal that one in five British workers don’t ever put pen to paper at work and a quarter don’t remember life without email. In fact, the average UK worker now sends and receives 40 emails a day with one in 12 working their mailbox into overdrive with 100 plus daily emails. 57% of those questioned admit to logging into their inbox outside of work hours and 85% of those who do, think it makes them more productive. Meanwhile, traditional methods of communication are falling by the wayside, as one in ten workers say they never make phone calls at work and 48% never post a letter.
58% of British workers believe that electronic gadgets such as computers, tablets and mobile phones have made them more industrious in the workplace. However, according to Warwick Business School, while the modern UK office seems unrecognisable from the days when a calculator cost three weeks wages and photo copies were made by hand, the perception that the computer-powered electronic office has made us more productive might not be completely true. In fact, the most recent statistics suggest productivity has risen by just 2% per year since 1973.
Will Skillman from Warwick Business School, who produced the report for npower, explains: “Since the 1950s, technology in the workplace has changed dramatically from telephones and typewriters to advanced personal computers, mobile communications equipment and tablet devices. Our study shows that British workers are now hugely reliant on electrical appliances throughout the working day and while on the move and feel this has improved their productivity.
“Yet what isn’t clear is whether this technology-powered workplace is directly helping to improve how we work or if we are just replacing old technologies with new. Certainly the rise of the mobile office means that workers can stay plugged in on the move and for longer periods of time, but whether this has resulted in a more productive workforce remains to be seen.”
Images of the changing workplace through the years are documented on npower’s ‘Remember How We Used To Work’ archive, (historypin.com/rememberhow), which looks back at how energy and technology has transformed the UK over the decades.
Created in collaboration with Mirrorpix, the website invites the general public to document and share their memories of how we used to work, cook and clean, keep warm, watch and listen, play and celebrate, uncovering tales of what life was like in the days before computers and mobile phones, when TVs were in black and white and when we made do without microwaves or dishwashers.