Checking emails after work can hurt your relationships, health

‘Always-on’ work culture can increase anxiety and stress levels of workers and their families
Turns out, employer expectations of work email monitoring during non-working hours are harmful to the health of not only employees but their family as well.

A new study conducted by William Becker, a Virginia Tech professor in the Pamplin College of Business, titled ‘‘Killing me softly: electronic communications monitoring and employee and significant-other well-being,” showed that such expectations result in anxiety, which adversely affects the health of employees and their families.


The study revealed that employees don’t have to spend actual time on work in their off-hours to experience the detrimental effects.

Just the expectations of availability increase strain for employees and others even without the actual engagement of the employees in work during non-work hours.

In a survey of full-time workers aged 31 to 40, frequent off-duty email checkers believed their habit caused little strife at home, yet their other halves complained that the behaviour pushed their patience to the limit.

Becker said, “The insidious impact of ‘always on’ organisational culture is often unaccounted for or disguised as a benefit — increased convenience, for example, or higher autonomy and control over work-life boundaries.”

Becker’s research interests also include work emotion, turnover, organisational neuroscience, and leadership. Few other studies have shown that the pressure of increased job demands leads to tension in family relationships when the employee is unable to fulfill non-work roles at home. With researchers at Lehigh and Colorado State universities, he found that the expectation to check messages at all hours was enough for employees to report greater anxiety and ill health. Even worse, their partners experienced raised stress levels too.

According to Becker, policies that decrease expectations to monitor electronic communication outside of work would be ideal. The solution may also include establishing boundaries or time limits on when electronic communication is acceptable during off-hours by setting up off-hour email schedules when a person is available to respond. If a job requires email availability, such expectations should be communicated clearly as a part of job responsibility. Such steps could reduce anxiety in employees and increase understanding from their family members.

And for employees, they could practice mindfulness, which has been shown to be effective in reducing anxiety and tension.