Nowadays people are more connected to their phones than ever, and while they allow us to easily stay in touch with one another, for some, having their phone on them means they never really leave the office. According to researchers out of Lehigh University, Virginia Tech and Colorado State, those after-hours emails, even if they are just part of the job, may be detrimental to an employee’s overall health.
For the study, researchers surveyed 385 working adults across a variety of industries. Authors asked participants about workplace norms and expectations related to after-hours email, as well as how much time they spent working on emails outside of typical hours in a normal week. They were also asked if they agreed or disagreed with a range of statements, like “Away from work I don’t think about work at all,” and “I feel emotionally drained from my work.”
One week later researchers conducted a second survey to measure work-family balance. Again, this was measured using agree/disagree statements like, “I am able to balance the demands of my work and the demands of my non-work.”
After-Hours Email and Your Health
After looking at the study results and adjusting for factors such as age, gender, industry and personal preferences related to work and family life, researchers uncovered:
- Expectations to act on email messages after hours were negatively linked to work-family balance.
- Unwinding from work is especially hard for people who prefer to keep job and family life separate.
- Expecting employees to be “on” all the time – monitoring and answering after hours emails – adds to emotional exhaustion.
- Even when a reply is not expected until normal working hours, receiving work emails during non-work hours was associated with increased stress levels.
“They still feel less ability to detach from work, more emotional exhaustion and low perceptions of work-family balance,” said study author Liuba Belkin, an associate professor of management at Lehigh University. “We can’t just say let’s prohibit all email, but there should be some balance.”
The study authors point to some interesting findings, but for many people, myself included, we can never fully unplug from our jobs. We learn to deal with it and take steps to ensure our work is covered when we’re traveling or without cell service, but we always end up waking up early on vacation to check our emails or heading down to the lobby before bed to use the wifi to ensure our loose ends are tied up. It may not be ideal, but it comes with the territory.