"Always On"? That Culture Can Lead Employees to Exhaustion and Chronic Stress (and Lower Productivity)
Have the kind of boss who thinks nothing of emailing you at 2 a.m. -- and expecting you to answer? Well, now, not so surprisingly, a new study done in France has found a link between organizational after-hours email expectations and emotional exhaustion. Big deal, you might say. But, big duh, it affects productivity. Workplace technologies may be hurting the very people they're set up to help, according to newswise.com. Using data from 365 adults, researchers looked at the role of "off-hour" organizational emailing and discovered that it leads to burnout and diminished family life-work balance. I could have told them that! Being the OCD person that I am, when I worked for a very large corporation that did a lot of this, I found myself checking my email every hour (or oftener) after getting home from work till bedtime -- and sometimes, even in the middle of the night. Those who didn't were shamed and sometimes punished. Those who are exhausted but un...