Technology has made us all constantly connected to each other. With just a click, we’re readily available on email, social networks or text messages. Because of that, employers started to expect their employees to be just as available as the technology made them. Has this happened to you? Or do they understand you need downtime?
Photo by Johan Larsson.
The New York Times addresses this in a recent article that takes a look at worker burnout from on-call behaviour. While a number of companies always expect you be available, some are starting to make the shift towards allowing their employees to truly turn off when they walk out the door. One example they give is of Volkswagen actually forcing some employees to shut down:
At the beginning of 2012, Volkswagen reached an agreement with a small portion of its work force to stop the e-mail server for employees who used BlackBerrys 30 minutes after their shift ended and restore it half an hour before work began the next day.
While employers certainly push employees to be available, it’s also a pressure employees put on themselves. We’ve suggested a few ways of taking care of this, including ways to really stop working when the clock hits 5pm and The Workplace Benefits of Being Out of Touch [New York Times]
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