More and more people struggle to manage their use of digital devices, and this can affect their well-being at home and at work. When we have become used to checking our smartphones in meetings, eating lunch in front of the PC and checking e-mails at night, our digital use is out of balance.

Why focus on digital balance?

Watch this video to learn the importance of finding a good digital balance. You can also download the video and share it with your employees - just play the video and click on the button in the top right-hand corner. This is a good way to start a discussion about digital habits at work.

Do you and your employees want to know more?

If you would like to learn more, listen to our podcast “Det digitale (arbejds)liv” (“The digital (work) life”) (in Danish), in which Naja Hulvej Rod, professor at the University of Copenhagen, explains about the long-term health impact of excessive use of smartphones and other digital devices. You and your employees can listen to the podcast here or find it in your usual podcast app – just search for ‘Sunde Stemmer’.

You and your employees can also read this e-folder with inspiration on how to balance your screen time at work. Share the e-folder with your employees by sending them a link, for example by e-mail, or by printing it and handing it out.

When you decide to put balancing your screen time on the agenda in your company, it may be helpful to demonstrate how this is relevant to the individual employee. Encourage them to take this smartphone addiction test. The test, developed in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen, consists of seven statements, to which you have to indicate whether you agree or disagree. Your test result reveals whether you have a low, medium or high level of smartphone addiction.

Invite your employees to take the test by sharing the link above. We recommend that you encourage your employees to take the test before you move on to step 3 “Find and maintain a balance”. To do so, you can use the meeting notice template under “Find and maintain a balance”.

Use the balance exercise to determine expectations and to make rules

All change begins with discussion, and this is precisely how to go about implementing Screen Time in your company.

Click the link in the box below to download our balance exercise. The purpose of the balance exercise is:

1. to start a discussion about the company’s expectations in relation to the use of digital tools at work and at home, 
2.  to enable you to make rules about the use of digital devices, for example the use of smartphones in meetings, opportunity to concentrate on tasks without being distracted by notifications on your PC and replying to e-mails outside business hours,
3. to challenge each other to observe the rules you make have made over a 21-day period.

The balance exercise is facilitated by a manager and can be carried out in teams or, if your company is small, by everybody together. If you are a large organisation, we recommend that the executive management initially does the exercise with team managers, who then do the exercise with their teams, and so on. This ensures that your entire organisation to participates.

Prepare your managers

It is important to prepare carefully, so that managers and employees are well briefed and ready to do the exercise. For this purpose, we have compiled the following elements for you to read and share with your managers.

The balance exercise comprises the following elements:

1. Management guide: A step-by-step guide to give you and your managers an understanding of what to do before, during and after the exercise. Set aside one hour for the exercise.
2. Meeting notice manuscript: We have prepared a meeting notice manuscript for managers to use when they invite employees to the balance exercise. The meeting notice includes links to the above video and test, as we recommend that employees are familiar with both before the exercise.
3. Slides: Use the link below to download slides for the manager to use in the balance exercise. There are four slides showing the different scenarios that the manager and employees can focus on in the exercise and one slide that you can use to challenge each other on the rules you make. 

Download slides for the balance exercise here (zip file)

Give your employees tips on how to balance their screen time

In addition to the balance exercise, you can hand out five tips on how you and your employees can balance your screen time. These are practical tips on how to avoid unnecessary interruptions in your work, how to make your smartphone less appealing and how to get an overview of your screen time.

When a company launches a new healthcare initiative, deciding a communication strategy can be difficult. We have therefore prepared some texts for you to use as a starting point when you put Screen Time on the agenda. It is a good idea to use your usual communication channels to communicate to the entire organisation and managers (for example intranet articles, e-mails or the like), and you can therefore adapt texts to your company’s needs.

With the link below, you find these texts:

1. Intranet article: the article explains why you want to put Screen Time on the agenda in your company. If you want to, you can insert a quote from the head of Human Resources, your CEO or another relevant person.
2.  E-mail: as mentioned, you must prepare your managers, and for this purpose we include a draft e-mail text from the executive management to team managers

Download communication package here (zip file)