Posted on 08/11/2018 8:10:19 AM PDT by grundle
Being expected to check work email during non-work hours is making employees, as well as their significant others, experience higher levels of anxiety, a study shows.
Researchers from Virginia Tech surveyed 108 employees working at least 30 hours per week, 138 significant others and 105 managers and found that the sheer expectation of monitoring work email, rather than the amount of time spent doing so, led to increased anxiety in both employees and their significant others.
"Some employees admitted to monitoring their work email from every hour to every few minutes, which resulted in higher levels of anxiety and conflict between spouses," co-author William Becker, an associate professor of management in the Pamplin College of Business, told ABC News.
Significant others also reported decreased relationship satisfaction in contrast to employees themselves, whose satisfaction was not affected by the constant monitoring of work email.
Professor Becker asked, "Are we underestimating the effect this is having on our spouses?"
Both partners also reported negative health impacts from the increased anxiety, which may be explained by the well-established relationship between chronic stress and poor physical and mental health outcomes.
"Anxiety can manifest in several ways, including changes in appetite, concentration, focus and decreased quality of sleep. It makes people less productive in their work and home lives," Dr. Lama Bazzi, who is part of the American Psychiatric Association Board of Directors, told ABC News.
This study comes months after New York Councilman Rafael Espinal introduced a "Right to Disconnect" Bill, the first of its kind in the U.S. and modeled after a similar legislation in France, which would make it unlawful for private employees in New York to respond to work email after hours.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
If getting a tug from work on the electonic umbilical cord is the worst thing that ever happens to these snowflakes, they should count themselves fortunate that they don’t know the real meaning of stress.
That is a serious case of get a life... my time off work is sanskrit, but then I work 70 hours not 30.
I work for myself and am thus responsible to pay all the bills and keep the lights on - so I am available literally 24/7, and I don’t mind. Its very rare that I have to field calls or emails on a Sunday anyway.
but I also choose who I work with and on what terms. So if there are emails or calls I don’t want to receive, that dissonance is simply a sign that I, or my organization, has made a mistake, either in some process, or our choice of customers or suppliers.
I know its different in the corporate world, where people feel they have zero choice. That’s not absolutely true - you have a choice of your work, your chosen career, and also, the terms on which people deal with you.
It also helps to count your blessings. And to my mind, if you have a job, you’re blessed.
Unpaid overtime. Bosses aren’t gonna stop you.
Actually, they might. Everything electronic is monitored. Emails, computer time, anything done on an employer’s tech. That said, so what? If the employer isn’t violating any laws and/or regs, that should be between employer and employee.
Suck it up and be grateful, snowflakes. And if you don’t want to, find a different gig.
I work for myself, as well. My only real complaint is pollsters calling the work landline.
(I have the worst boss in the world!)
“I work for myself and am thus responsible to pay all the bills and keep the lights on - so I am available literally 24/7, and I don’t mind. Its very rare that I have to field calls or emails on a Sunday anyway. but I also choose who I work with and on what terms.”
exactly the same here for my IT support business. IT support for small businesses is a 100% on-call support business, though outside of 9-to-5 is rare.
Oh give me a !@#$ing break. This is the real difference between entry, mid, senior, lead and executive.
If you want to be a top contributor and/or make money, you have to go over and above - rather than sit on your couch and btch that you never have anything. Welcome to the real world.
Early in my working life I saw a couple of workaholics suffer very serious health problems which effected both their careers and personal lives. Hard work can be productive and satisfying, but like anything else it can also be destructive when done to excess.
Its hard finding the right work-life balance, but its a necessary thing to strive for.
I’ve never been told that I’m expected to check or respond to emails on personal time. Occasionally I do if I deem it important.
I just got home from vacation. On my out of office message, I wrote that I would be in an area that had no cell coverage, which was true. At best I went from one bar to No Service for an entire week.
I ran a summer camp for about 100 kids. The camp office had Wi-Fi but I was far too busy to worry about my personal e-mails.
I’m wiped out. I think it’s time for another nap.
William Becker, an associate professor of management in the Pamplin College of Business — always on top of the latest developments, the Assoc. Prof. is. We were chained to our devices and expected to be available at all hours 20 years ago. He should change his name to Rip van Becker.
When I was managing a staff, I had no expectation that they'd be "on call" outside work hours unless they were working on a project that required it. Even without this expectation, I found many of my staff sending e-mails even after I had gone to bed.
I forbade my staff from sending me text messages, and I removed the instant messaging feature from my own computer. In a professional setting, these are two of the dumbest forms of communication ever invented.
It is an issue for non exempt hourly workers. It is a violation of FSLA rules to work without getting paid. Just checking probably isn't, but if they spend time responding it certainly is. A large firm my actually lockout their hourly employees from IT systems after hours.
I am self employed and have always checked email on weekends and evenings.
How is checking email more stressful than, say, a farmer who must feed stock daily or examine irrigation systems? Or in more primitive hunter/gatherer days when folks always looked for game tracks or kept their eyes open for roots or berries to harvest?
When did sociologists determine that mankind should live in compartments separating work life from home life or leisure?
Probably around the time electricity was invented, and most people no longer worked in an outdoor environment where you pretty much had to work only when the sun was up.
Then the industrial revolution came along, and this meant that most people (by definition) would travel to work outside the home in a place of employment using heavy machinery that couldn't be brought home with them. This was a "compartmentalized" life by definition, I think.
Now we live in a post-industrial age where the typical work place doesn't look much different than a home in a lot of ways ... so we're losing that compartmentalization.
Good perspective - I think Dr. Deming would approve considering a mistake in a process as a need for improvement.
What used to bug me was my employer asking me to give her my personal cell number. I didn’t do it. If the expectation was for me to be available on personal time, my expectation was a company-provided phone. That was before unlimited talk and text, so every contact cost ME money.
Oracle had an over worked programmer. He had a heart attack. In his hospital bed, the executive brought in a laptop so the dying employee could get more work done.
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