Drop the smartphone! Answering those so-called ‘urgent’ work emails outside of office hours doesn’t just eat into your work-life balance – it’s emotionally exhausting, according to a new study.
A new study, authored by a trio of researchers from Lehigh University, Virginia Tech and Colorado State University in the US, reveals that – major spoiler alert – there’s a link between scrolling through your inbox on the sofa and emotional burnout, which in turn throws ‘work-family balance’ off kilter.
Researchers Liuba Belkin, William Becker and Samantha A. Conroy collected data from just under 300 working adults to investigate the impact of out-of-hours email upon the employees’ emotional wellbeing.
‘Email is notoriously known to be the impediment of the recovery process. Its accessibility contributes to experience of work overload since it allows employees to engage in work as if they never left the workspace, and at the same time, inhibits their ability to psychologically detach from work-related issues via continuous connectivity,’ according to the authors.
According to the study, it’s not necessarily the amount of time spent reading and responding to emails that exhausts us. Instead, it’s the lingering expectation of having to answer these messages that drains workers, creating anticipatory stress – a constant state of anxiety in response to anticipated threats – that stops us from truly switching off.
Naturally, the consequences aren’t great for employees or their employers. ‘If an organisation perpetuates the ‘always on’ culture it may prevent employees from fully disengaging from work, eventually leading to chronic stress’ according to co-author Belkin. ‘As prior research has shown, if people cannot disconnect from work and recuperate, it leads to burnout, higher turnover, more deviant behaviour, lower productivity and other undesirable outcomes.’
So far, so gloomy – but how can we break the cycle and stop emails wriggling their way into our personal, ‘off’ time? While the French have gone so far as to introduce an agreement recognising workers’ ‘right of disconnecting’ – whereby an employee can clock off at 6pm and not face criticism for failing to respond to urgent messages outside of their contracted working hours – the study’s authors recognise that in some professions, this isn’t always a viable option. Instead, the study's authors suggest the possibility of implementing ‘email free days,’ or offering rotating out-of-hour schedules for email management.
Failing that, if you're desperate to escape the tide of post-6pm message notifications, un-syncing your work email account from your iPhone is always pretty liberating. Just saying...
READ MORE: This App Stops You Sending Over-Apologetic Work Emails