Employees 'forced' to unplug during holidays

Washington

After 10 years working at the same company, Debra Woodfork is planning a four-week sabbatical in May.

The design manager at an association for corporate in-house lawyers in Washington plans to take her first international trip to Japan.

And to make sure she comes back refreshed, her employer is suspending her work e-mail account.

While she is excited to soak up Japanese culture and indulge her "obsession" with matcha green tea, Ms Woodfork said leaving her inbox unchecked may be difficult. "Sometimes I do it so much, I don't even realise I am doing it," she said.

The vacation policy of no e-mail is one way employers are dealing with the stress of the modern workplace, where technology allows people to field work e-mails late into the night and first thing in the morning when they roll out of bed.

For managers trying to address the creeping issue of overwork, vacation is a good place to start setting boundaries, said Cassidy Solis, workplace flexibility programme specialist at the Society for Human Resource Management.

While the work day is often blurred, a vacation is well-defined, as in "I need off the week of March 1," she explained.

Ms Solis' organisation recognised Association of Corporate Counsel with its most recent When Work Works award for employers that stand out for promoting work-life balance.

It honoured Creative Plan Designs, a retirement consulting firm in East Meadow, New York, that automatically forwards e-mails to another employee for colleagues on vacation.

Also honoured was Olark, a San Francisco-based technology company that gives a US$1,000 bonus to employees who take at least five days of vacation without checking in online and share vacation photos when they return.

"We try to give some positive reinforcement, so they understand it's okay to take this break," Olark spokesman Karl Pawlewicz said from his vacation in Quebec. He added that he was bending the rules to correspond with a reporter.

Mr Pawlewicz said he got to do "a bunch of awesome stuff", such as visit his nephews, stay in "a castle-like place in Quebec City" and enjoy the "Canadian version of bowling". He also took "a couple naps here and there".

Studies show that taking time off from work - and work-related e-mail - lowers levels of fatigue and job burnout. Employees who come back rested tend to perform better at solving problems and other creative tasks.

Employers also said such policies are a recruitment tool and encourage retention.

Some European companies have been leaders in restricting e-mail use outside of working hours. Germany-based automaker Daimler allows employees to set their e-mail accounts to auto-delete while they are on vacation. And Volkswagen, also based in Germany, programs its servers to stop sending e-mails to some employees after-hours.

NO WORK E-MAILS AFTER 6PM

Starting in January, a new French law gave employees nationwide "the right to disconnect", requiring companies with 50 or more employees to devise a policy that prevents office e-mails from encroaching on leisure time. One proposal is to stop work e-mails after 6pm.

The law followed a French study about the affliction of "info-obesity" that detailed health effects, such as sleeplessness, that stem from chronic reliance on technology.

A separate 2014 study from University of British Columbia found that people who frequently check e-mail throughout the day experience higher levels of stress and tension as they constantly shift their attention between tasks and rearrange priorities.

Reactions to France's new policy have been mixed, with even advocates for family-friendly work environments urging caution and saying that a no-email after hours policy is not the answer for a lot of employees.

Many people have colleagues in different time zones and many value the flexibility to work nights or weekends if it means some freedom during a typical work day.

"Edicts alone won't solve the problem of overwork," said Ellen Ernst Kossek, a professor at Purdue University Krannert School of Management, adding that her research shows that people want to work at different times and different ways depending on their habits and personal lives.

"We have to teach people to have healthy e-mail behaviours," she said. That could include employees and employers talking about what is a reasonable response time for e-mail, for example, and what is appropriate time to send e-mails.

Veta Richardson, president and chief executive at the Association of Corporate Counsel, said unplugging from work completely for a few weeks helped her at a critical time in her life.

Her mother died in 2010, while she was working as a chief executive at another organisation. In her grief, she and her sister boarded a plane for a three-week trip to India. She told her staff she would not be checking e-mail. When she came back, she felt rejuvenated.

"I learnt it does not matter what position you hold, things can be handled when you are not here," she said. "It's a lesson I have never forgotten."

She unplugged again when she started her job at the counsel a year later, with a three-week trip to China. Then she made the benefit available to her staff of more than 80 people.

"We told staff they should not feel the need to keep up with e-mail while on leave or the need to come back to an overwhelming inbox," she said.

Among those on her staff who have taken advantage of it was Joshua Shields, an associate editor for the counsel's monthly magazine, went to Uruguay last year on a vacation. On the first day, he surprised his girlfriend by driving to the beach and proposing to her.

Catherine Moynihan, senior director of legal management services, was among the first to unplug during a two-week trip to Australia with her family. She did so under some duress from Ms Richardson.

HARD TO LET GO

"It's hard to let go for some of us who take a lot of ownership and are tied up in our jobs," said Ms Moynihan.

For her, it meant dropping that an-hour-a-day of e-mail maintenance that allowed her to keep tabs on things while she was gone.

"I was definitely twitchy for a while," she said. "I realised I had this physical reflex while waiting in a line or that pause in a conversation before picking up the book."

Instead, she went scuba diving, visited friends in Melbourne and saw some kangaroos. "It allowed me to really forget about work, not have it be in my dreams and in my night wakings," she said.

The conference room at the counsel's office features a wall full of glossy travel photos taken by employees over the past 15 years. There are pictures from Arches National Park in Utah and Victoria Falls in Zambia and a flea market in Beijing.

Tiffani Alexander, editor-in-chief of the association's magazine, is planning a month-long sabbatical this summer after 10 years at the association.

She plans to go to Greece and learn more about ancient history. "I want to go to Athens and stand where Cleopatra stood," she said. Then she plans to sit in her home office and work on her novel.

Turning over the reigns completely is something she has never tried to do, but she said she trusts her co-workers and she's ready to try. WP