I recently read an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune entitled Companies Urging Employees to Stop After-Hours Emails (www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-companies-urging-workers-to-avoid-afterhours-email-20120921,0,507363.story). In reading this, I became aware of the fact that more and more employees are spending their time answering emails and doing work after hours.
The more time an employee spends at work, the more time they will spend doing work at home. That’s basically the main point I got from this article. For companies this is a great event because it has many advantages. If a person is spending all their time working and sending emails, they in turn, will be great assets to the company because of their knowledge. However, economists, as well as, the general public believe that employees who take their work home with them tend to feel more pressured and tired. According to the article, the productivity index in the workplace is up 2.6% since last year.
After reading this article I began to think of all the drawbacks of bringing work home. Constant fatigue and pressure can really add to lack of performance and negative attitudes towards work.
I run a maintenance company and it isn’t uncommon for me to be answering emails until the late hours. Bringing my work home with me is inevitable. The constant pressure and lack of time in the day to answer every email and every call has lead to late nights catching up on work. I can understand why some companies are requiring this change for its employees.
Does anyone think that bringing work home causes more pressure and negative views of the job? Could this cause an increased turnover rate in companies? Is anyone dealing with this at their own jobs?
I did a “busy season” working as an audit intern for this company. And bringing work back home is inevitable for professions in my field of work. The teams I worked with were really flexible so I tend not to have to bring work home. However, the staffs and seniors in my team have to give their time outside of work to finish up their work. On top of that, there are also multiple meetings (status call) throughout the week that really do not help get the work moving. I was constantly on the phone or computer checking my emails to see if there was any last minute change or work that I should do. The work was really demanding as you are also racing against a deadline while keeping the quality of work high. This created a stressful environment for most of us.
I remembered to keep myself from being too stressful I would constantly be snacking on food to keep going. For my seniors who have to work till late at night (11pm-12am sometime 1 or 2am), they have to wake up early the next morning to commute to work and/or finish their work. It was also very rare for you during busy season to have a full weekend off since you have to go to work on Saturday and may or may not come to work on Sunday (depending on your client). My seniors all warned me of the stress but no matter what I did the work always pile up. So I do understand why most people want to check their emails to finish their work, but by doing this they are creating more stress. They need time off to relax so that once at work they can give all their energy to their work and not be tired out since they are working all the time.
I could see this being beneficial. After putting in a full days work at the office there is always something personal that still needs to get done. On an average day I would say it would be lucky to get more than an hour of actual free time. The last thing I ever want to hear is the sound of my phone going off and knowing that it is an email that now ends that little free time that I previously had. I do not think that these emails and phone calls could ever be eliminated but a cut back could be good for everyone.