Psychologist warns of obsessive email checking when out of the office
by Dave Neal
08 May 2015A professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University Management School has warned people to take the weekend off from work email and give themselves a break from office communications.
Sir Cary Cooper is concerned about workplace stress and the work/life balance. He told the BBC that the weighting is too much in favour of work, and recommended that people give themselves some time away.
The current situation is harmful to people, businesses and the economy, and he urged companies to rethink their communications practices.
“For people to be working at night, weekends and holiday on emails is not good for the health of our country,” he said.
Cooper added that email should be discouraged in favour of face-to-face meetings and phone calls, at least when it is appropriate. “We need to ban emails [sent and received] within the same building,” he said.
A measured approach to in-house email management is probably the best response, however, and Cooper is not recommending that email is turned off completely, but that firms consider its use and its impact on employees.
“I think it’s pretty extreme to close down your server, but if it turns out that [email] is adversely affecting your business and the health of your employees, then that’s an option,” he said.
Cooper recommended that firms put systems in place that monitor email use and intervene if it appears to be excessive.
For example, an employee reading work emails at the weekend could be sent a notification that prompts them to reconsider what they are doing.
“They could get a message back, for example, saying: ‘You have accessed 27 messages today,’ alerting them to what they are doing,” he added
“Every organisation has to come to a conclusion as to what is a good way to be operating, and the best way to do that is by asking the employees themselves how we stop this epidemic of us being linked all the time to our emails.”
source: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2407617/uk-expert-warns-of-overwhelming-email-epidemic
