Is The Expectation Of Constant Availability Fuelling Employee Burnout?

From my personal experience, I’ve seen the dramatic improvements that smartphone technology has had on our ability to communicate effectively and efficiently in business.

However, it’s also seen many blur the lines between their professional and personal lives – and while I respect the hustle, the inability to properly switch off can be detrimental to our personal wellbeing.

With that in mind I tasked the YourBusinessNumber team with conducting a survey of professionals in the property sector. Where the use of WhatsApp to communicate with homebuyers and sellers has seen huge growth in the last few years.

Here’s what we found:

Our survey revealed that 25% of clients contacting a property professional, such as an estate agent, now expect to be responded to outside of working hours?

It’s no wonder that blurred lines between work and personal time, along with increased accessibility, are leading to stress and fatigue for property professionals.

Our recent study found that over half of employees working in the property sector report suffering from high levels of stress as a result of being unable to completely switch off from work during their personal and family time.

In the past, office phones were the number one point of contact between buyers, sellers and estate agents.

Now, due to smartphones and the popularity of messaging apps such as WhatsApp Business, clients can get in touch at any time of day – and with a quarter of those surveyed expecting to be responded to before the next working day has begun, this poses a real challenge to the wellbeing of property professionals.

With 78% of property professionals stating that their smartphone is pivotal to their day job, there are obvious benefits to this mode of interaction.

But the downsides of this increased accessibility are troubling for property professionals. 26% of estate agents report regularly dealing with work communications outside of their contracted working hours, while 34% have experienced increased enquiries out of hours as a result of the pandemic property market boom.

Crucially, we also found that 56% of property professionals use just one phone for both business and personal use, meaning that they’re never officially ‘off the clock’ when it comes to receiving work related messages.

I think the fact that over half of those we surveyed use their personal phone as their work phone is probably the biggest factor preventing truly uninterrupted downtime.

There’s certainly no shame in switching off and that’s why we wanted to provide a solution that facilitates this without the need to juggle multiple handsets – learn more about getting your own virtual WhatsApp Number now.