OUT OF OFFICE: Should access to work emails be restricted outside of working hours?

Always-on, swipe right, wired, antisocial are just a few of the labels attached to our digital generation.

Anyone who’s been on a tube at rush hour - all ear pods and bent necks - will understand why. And it’s not just Netflix and funny memes. Whether it’s 7am on the Northern Line or 7pm in front of the TV, the majority of us have grown accustomed to receiving and responding to work messages outside of prescribed office hours. 

What’s the effect of the ‘always on’ culture on our mental health?

In 2017, French companies with more than 50 employees were made to establish hours during which staff should not send or respond to emails. Last year, Lidl bosses in Belgium banned all internal email correspondences between the hours of 6pm and 7am to help staff clear their minds and enjoy time off. 

More recently, New York City discussed plans to become the first US city to grant employees the "right to disconnect" after work. This stemmed from a concern that the work/life balance was becoming too skewed. But in the past few days, an attack on this stance has got the professional arena talking. 

Should UK companies - or even the government - be exploring something similar? As well as an invasion of their personal lives, critics of the ‘always-on’ culture argue that working outside of office hours allows employers to get extra hours of unpaid work out of their staff.

However, a recent study from the University of Sussex offers a different perspective. The headline claimed that banning out-of-hours email could actually harm employee well-being. The researchers argued that not being able to deal with urgent requests or manage workloads as they see fit could cause workers more stress and be harmful to people with anxiety.  

This also feels at odds with creating more flexible and accommodating work practices. In a study conducted with over 2,000 workers, the number one priority was flexible working. 49% of staff want perks that contribute to improving their work/life balance.

When it comes to emails, workers at least have the option to open them or not. But with text and WhatsApp messages, they don’t have that same flexibility. This is arguably where the company has a responsibility to help protect their staff from ‘out-of-hours’ communication. 

After all, isn’t it the right of the worker to choose when and how often they are contacted by their colleagues?

We think so. That’s why we created the intelligent muting function. Yapster users can choose when they receive notifications, whether that’s every time they receive a Yap, never, or during selected hours only. They are free to decide the days they wish to receive notifications, and between which times - and until they’re ready, their messages will be waiting for them. 

With one-third of workers claiming that the flexibility of remote access makes them feel “empowered”, restricting ‘out-of-hours’ email access doesn’t seem like the appropriate solution to the work/life balance argument. Ensuring that staff have manageable workloads, and don’t feel pressure to work out of hours are key to employee well being.

So, while downtime is integral to a happy, healthy lifestyle, the freedom to choose how we establish that work/life balance is equally - if not more - important. It’s this freedom of choice that will lead to increased productivity and higher employee satisfaction. 

Lara Businaro