Organisations Need to Prioritise Mental Health in a Digital World - Here's Why...
We are working at a pace our nervous systems were never designed for. Back-to-back meetings, Slack pings, Teams alerts, emails, WhatsApp messages, always on, always plugged in.
But human beings don’t operate like that. As neuroscientist Amishi Jha (2010) explains, our attentional systems are finite. Constant task-switching depletes cognitive resources and reduces our ability to focus and retain information. When our brains are overloaded with stimuli, the prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making and emotional regulation, struggles to function effectively (Arnsten, 2009).
Research from the American Psychological Association (2020) also highlights that prolonged exposure to digital interruption increases stress and decreases performance. In other words, the more we try to keep up, the less effective we become.
We are not machines. We’re not designed for relentless input without pause. Without intentional breaks, the nervous system stays in a state of low-level threat, “wired but tired”, as psychologist Richard Davidson describes it.
We’ve seen this in our work with a large US client navigating significant change following a major ownership transition. As they worked to scale globally and strengthen their performance culture, we discovered something important: their people weren’t resisting the change or the new strategic direction, they were overwhelmed by the pace, the volume of communication, and the constant sense of urgency.
The culture wasn’t broken, but the system was overloaded.
Here are two of the changes we introduced:
- We integrated structured micro-pauses into leadership routines, intentional moments to reflect before reacting, so decisions weren’t made on autopilot.
- We strengthened feedback loops, giving leaders the language and confidence to hold performance and empathy side by side in their 1:1s.
This wasn’t about slowing down for the sake of it. It was about helping leaders move with intention, so the organisation could speed up without burning out because mental health isn’t a sideline and it's not an ‘HR issue’. It’s central to performance.
