BBC: For the average working person, there’s no greater feeling than powering down your computer and kissing goodbye to your avalanche of work emails for the day. If we’re lucky enough to disconnect from the job on evenings and weekends, we’re overjoyed to leave work email and the stress that comes with it in the office.
But experts say we’re increasingly failing to do so, instead bringing the burden home with us and fielding emails during our free time. Unsurprisingly, this routine has some serious consequences.
Working abnormal or long hours has long been linked with depression, anxiety and even coronary heart disease. Crucially, the importance of weekend recovery has also been correlated with weekly job performance and personal initiative. While further research revealed psychological detachment during off-work time, reduced emotional exhaustion caused by high job demands and helped people stay engaged.
So, if we know all this, it begs the question: why are we still letting work invade our precious weekends?
“It started when I lacked experience, I feared I might miss important information,” says Romain Gonord, a technical expert for Smile, an IT service provider with offices across France. “Now, it is a reflex, like checking my Facebook or Twitter timeline.”
Some feel this shift is just a natural evolution of the workplace and a result our stubborn inability to unplug. Others find it more sinister.
One government took radical steps to try to protect ‘Le Weekend’, but has it worked?
Last year France introduced a law giving some workers at companies with 50 or more employees the ability to negotiate the responsibility to check emails outside standard working hours.