Why Cognitive Load Could Be The Most Important Employee Experience Metric In The Next 10 Years | Forbes

Employee wellbeing (EWB) is a top priority for many organizations. Similarly, the employee experience (EE) and worker productivity continue to be key areas of focus. As firms evaluate and determine strategies, tactics, and investments that impact these outcomes, one underleveraged tactic for affecting these areas is a firm’s ability to understand and help manage their workforce’s “cognitive load.” Cognitive load (CL) is a theory that suggests that people have trouble performing tasks and learning new things if they are trying to process too much information at once. As CL increases, it can detract from quality decision-making, productivity, and wellbeing, to name a few. Since workers today are operating under growing digital data and processing demands (e.g., emails, chat tools, video conferences, etc.), each of these demands generates a cognitive load. And with remote and hybrid work increasing in many organizations, employees’ need to process digital communication data will only increase. This article speaks to how the measurement of CL in the future can connect to productivity and business performance and be a KPI to understand and improve the EE and EWB. It will be interesting to see how firms tap into this measure and use it to influence the outcomes of interest.