UPDATE: New Year, Less After Hours Email?

Last March I posted about a proposed French law that would make after-hours email and other forms of work-related communication more or less 'ignoreable' for employees. After 6PM on work days, (and on holidays and weekends), French workers could not be compelled to be 'on' and responsive to the bosses 10PM emails or expected to be 'available' via their phones on weekends or on their vacations.

In March I offered these comments on the proposed email regulations:

At least here in the USA, the vast majority of advice and strategery around helping folks with trying to achieve a better level of work/life balance seems to recommend moving much more fluidly between work and not-work. Most of the writing on this seems to advocate for allowing workers much more flexibility over their time and schedules so that they can take care of personal things on 'work' time, with the understanding that they are actually 'working' lots of the time they are not technically 'at work'. Since we all have smartphones that connect us to work 24/7, the thinking goes that we would all have better balance and harmony between work and life by trying to blend the two together more seamlessly.

And I guess that is reasonably decent advice and probably, (by necessity as much as choice), that is what most of us try and do to make sure work and life are both given their due.

But the proposal from the French labor minister is advocating the exact opposite of what conventional (and US-centric), experts mostly are pushing. The proposed French law would (at least in terms of email), attempt to re-build the traditional and clear divide and separation between work and not-work. If this regulation to pass, and if it is outside of your 'work' time, then feel free to ignore that email. No questions asked. No repercussions. At least in theory.

But here is the question I want to leave with you: What if the French are right about this and the commonly accepted wisdom and advice about blending work and life is wrong?

What if we'd all be happier, and better engaged, and more able to focus on our work if we were not, you know, working all the time?

What if you truly shut it down at 5PM every day?

That is some of what I had to say about that regulation back in March. Now to the 'Update' part of the post - it turns out that proposed 'No email after 6PM' law actually did pass, and went into effect in France at the New Year.

From January 1 onwards, employers having 50 or more employees in France will have to offer their staffs a 'right to disconnect'. From coverage of the new regulation in the Guardian, "Under the new law, companies will be obliged to negotiate with employees to agree on their rights to switch off and ways they can reduce the intrusion of work into their private lives."

If the organization and the employees can't come to an agreement, then the employer must publish a charter or set of rules that explicitly state the demands on, and rights of, employees during non-work hours.

It is going to be interesting to follow this story to see how it plays out in France, if employers really do follow the edicts of the new regulations, (there are not yet punitive measures in place for employers who do not comply), and if these regulations prove to impact organizational productivity and employee well-being.

For my part, thinking about this story for the first time since last March when the new law was initially proposed, I don't think my reaction is any different now than it was then.

What if we'd all be happier, and better engaged, and more able to focus on our work if we were not, you know, expected to be working all the time?

Have a great Wednesday. Have fun poring through the 19 emails that came for you last night. Unless you were up at 11PM replying to them already.

CHART OF THE DAY: All the places you can't stop emailing

Today's CHART OF THE DAY comes to us courtesy of the folks at Adobe, who recently shared some results from their second annual consumer email survey. 

As you may have already expected, after taking a side-eyed glance at your out of control Inbox, our collective Inbox is , well, out of control.

Per the Adobe survey, the typical white collar worker is spending 17% more  time on email compared to last year, and despite this increase in time spent with email, (and email volume), almost half of all workers expect a response to a work-related email in less than one hour. Aside, if you are one of those people who expect that kind of responsiveness, I think I hate you. And you certainly hate me.

There are quite a few other interesting nuggets in the Adobe survey, but the one chart I wanted to share is below, which shows how our disturbing attachment to email consumes us, and infringes on everything we do. Check out the data, (kids, cover your eyes), then some FREE comments from me after the data.

That we can't stop checking/responding to email while watching TV or even in bed isn't all that shocking any longer. But some of the other venues (driving, formal ceremonies, in the bathroom) where at least a good number of folks admit to email use are more more unsettling.

Sorry, I just need to step away from my best friend's wedding/nephew's baptism/grandma's funeral in order to respond to this email. It will just be a second, I promise. And please remember how many folks are all over their email and smartphones in the bathroom the next time a group of people ask you if you wouldn't mind taking a group picture of them with one of their phones. Gross.

One last data point to share from the survey - people have become so addicted to email that many are actively having to 'detox' from the siren call of their inboxes. Nearly half of folks, 45%, have taken an email detox lasting an average of 5.3 days and report feeling 'liberated' and 'relaxed' from these detox efforts.

I know I swore I would quit writing/complaining about email. But here I go again. Just like you swore you wouldn't check your email on date night or at junior's soccer game.

I, like you, just can't help it. We are addicted.

Happy Wednesday.

The tyranny of connectivity

I am slightly ashamed to admit to having done a fair bit of 'real' work over the long Labor Day weekend, (including yesterday, Labor Day itself). 

Of course I didn't really want to work on Labor Day, or perhaps said differently, I did not want involve other people in said work, mainly by sending out email messages to them on a holiday. But, sadly, I indeed did send a few email notes out, interspersed with the other work that I was doing that did not need to involve communicating to others in order to complete.

And I as wind up the holiday, (I am writing this on Monday night, pretty late), I have three quick observations from my Labor Day spent, (at least partly), working.

1. LOTS of other people were working too. As I mentioned, I did, against almost everything I hold dear, send a few work-related emails on Labor Day. I received replies from almost everyone I contacted. And three or four people replied to me within 10 minutes of my original message. If Labor Day is meant to be a celebration of the working person, lots of working persons I know were also, actually, working.

2. NO ONE I corresponded with over email or chat on Labor Day did not mention the fact that it was, in fact, a holiday. No one questioned why I was messaging them. No one replied, 'hey, it is a holiday, I will get back to you tomorrow', and almost no one failed to get back to me by about 8PM ET, (as I am writing this). 

3. Aside from the aforementioned email exchanges, I spent most of my 'working' time on tasks that did not require outside collaboration, input, or communication. They were just things I needed to do, and were fairly important, but for some reason had not been done. I noticed my ability to get these tasks completed on a holiday, where I was not being peppered every 2 minutes with a new incoming email or chat message was incredibly enhanced. Quite simply, I was probably twice as productive working on these items on a holiday as I would have been on a normal Monday, when I am, like everyone else, almost constantly being barraged by incoming messages and requests. If I changed my working hours to say, 7PM - 3AM I swear I would be two or three times more productive than I am now. The technology and the need to stay 'connected' all the time during the normal workday is killing our ability to get things done.

I am not about to change my official work schedule to 'off hours', but I can't say that I am not tempted. there is something to be said for working when no one, (or most anyway), are not working, and you can be, despite our state of constant connectivity, be more or less alone with your thoughts.

There are thousands of productivity advice pieces that advocate that you consciously disconnect from email and work chat and Slack, etc. during the work day in order to get more work done. But realistically, how many people actually take that advice and feel comfortable and empowered enough to actually not be accessible to work colleagues for large stretches of the workday?

Most organizations, and teams, expect if not demand almost real-time access and response.

It is not until you spend a day, or even a few hours, working when that expectation simply does not matter until you realize how our constant connectivity damages our ability to get anything done.

Having said that, maybe I should not have been surprised so many other folks seemed to be working on Labor Day. They too must have realized that a holiday is the best day to get anything done.

Have a great week!

More from the 'Email is ruining our lives' department

I have not written about email and how horrible it is for some time, so I was kind of glad that I was reminded of that horribleness (probably not a word, but let's keep going), while reviewing a recent survey about after-work hours email habits published by the enterprise service management company Samanage.

It's a short, but informative report, and I recommend taking a few minutes to read the entire thing, but if you can't spare the 20 minutes or so (probably because you have to get back to your email), I will just call out the two most interesting survey findings and then because you expect no less, offer some FREE commentary about what these data points should make us think about as HR/business leaders.Ed Ruscha 'Actual Size', 1962

Finding 1:

More than 1 in 3 survey respondents (35.2%), said they spend more than 1 hour per day checking emails outside of work.

Implication: The demands and expectations on many of us are so high that we simply can never get 'caught up', at least to the point where we can enjoy a night, or heaven forbid an entire weekend, without work, (in the form of endless emails), continuing to roll in. 

When asked why we spend so much time after hours on email, almost all the responses are some version of the notion (and expectation), that if we don't spend at least part of your off-hours dealing with email, you won't be doing your job. That's pretty sad, and pretty frightening at the same time.

Finding 2:

20% of survey respondents reported that checking after-hours email produces negative feelings about work, including feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.

Implication: Of all the findings in the survey, this is the one that I think bears the most consideration by HR and business leaders. The long-term, heck even medium-term effects of this email overload into all hours of the day and night are taking a toll on the workforce, at least 20% of them anyway. And that is not an insignificant figure. How would you feel if you knew that 20% of your team was 'overwhelmed and frustrated?' 

And it is not just the employee's feelings and welfare you should think about. What about their friends and family members who all too often find themselves taking a back seat to your employee having to answer her email during dinner or at the ball game or when they are meant to be doing something, anything that is 'not work?'  

Ugh. But I know that email is never going away, not in our working lifetimes anyway. I have finally resigned myself to that reality.

However it can be less terrible. And we can do better to make sure it is not ruining our free time, filling us with anxiety, and tethering us to our work and workplaces no matter where we may be and what we are doing.

I don't think I am going to write about email anymore, at least for some time. I am kind of tired of thinking about it. But after all these years and the many, many hours I have spent writing about the tool I guess the simplest conclusion or recommendation I have reached to try and make things better is this:

Before writing another email, especially one after hours or on the weekend stop writing and think for 30 seconds or "Do I really, really need to send this message, with this information, to these people, right now?"

Followed closely by a this follow-up:

"How do I want people to feel about me, their job, the team, and the organization when they see this email?"

Think about both of these questions before you hit 'send' at 11:30PM on Friday night.

Actually, think about them at 10:20AM on Tuesday as well.

Have a great week!

It's after 5PM: Don't you even THINK about replying to that email

Clearing out a bunch of 'saved for later' articles in my feed reader this past weekend and I came across this gem from our pals at the Washington Post - France may pass a law allowing people to ignore work emails at home. Here is all you need to know on this, (in case you couldn't figure out the gist from the on the nose headine):

Among a host of new reforms designed to loosen the more stringent regulations in the country’s labor market, France’s labor minister, Myriam El Khomri, is including a provision that would give employees the right to ignore professional emails and other messages when outside the office. It would essentially codify a division between work and home and, on a deeper level, between public and private life.

El Khomri apparently fleeced this idea from a report by Bruno Mettling, a director general in charge of human resources at Orange, the telecommunications giant. Mettling believes this policy would benefit employers as much as their employees, whom, he has said, are likely to suffer “psychosocial risks” from a ceaseless communication cycle. As reported in Le Monde, a recent study found than approximately 3.2 million French workers are at risk of “burning out,” defined as a combination of physical exhaustion and emotional anxiety. Although France is already famous for its 35-hour workweek, many firms skirt the rules — often through employees who continue working remotely long after they leave for the day.

I know what my (primarily) USA-based readers are thinking right about now. Likely some combination of 'Those French don't know what it takes to compete in the modern economy', 'It is too late for that idea, technology has made the walls between work and non-work just about irrelevant', and 'You will never get the raise/title/office/parking space you want without working ALL THE TIME'.

At least here in the USA, the vast majority of advice and strategery around helping folks with trying to achieve a better level of work/life balance seems to recommend moving much more fluidly between work and not-work. Most of the writing on this seems to advocate for allowing workers much more flexibility over their time and schedules so that they can take care of personal things on 'work' time, with the understanding that they are actually 'working' lots of the time they are not technically 'at work'. Since we all have smartphones that connect us to work 24/7, the thinking goes that we would all have better balance and harmony between work and life by trying to blend the two together more seamlessly.

And I guess that is reasonably decent advice and probably, (by necessity as much as choice), that is what most of us try and do to make sure work and life are both given their due.

But the proposal from the French labor minister is advocating the exact opposite of what conventional (and US-centric), experts mostly are pushing. The proposed French law would (at least in terms of email), attempt to re-build the traditional and firm divide and separation between work and not-work. If this were to pass, then if it is outside of your 'work' time, then feel free to ignore that email. No questions asked. No repercussions. At least in theory.

An interesting, if very Frecnch-sounding idea.

But here is the question I want to leave with you: What if the French are right about this and the commonly accepted wisdom and advice about blending work and life is wrong?

What if we'd all be happier, and better engaged, and more able to focus on our work if we were not, you know, working all the time?

What if you truly shut it down at 5PM every day?

What would that look like?