If you are an employer and expecting staff to stay up to date on email even after work hours -- you could be putting their family's health at risk. This includes the health of said employee who keeps checking their email and work-related messages even after getting back home from work.
While it can be expected that a person who spends too much time in office will invariably put a strain on their own health, a new study has found out that people who bring office work home could cause harm to their families health as well.
In a paper titled "Killing me softly: electronic communications monitoring and employee and significant-other well-being," researchers from Virginia Tech spoke about the anxiety that such actions bring into the household.
William Becker, who co-authored the study pointed out, "The competing demands of work and non-work lives present a dilemma for employees, which triggers feelings of anxiety and endangers work and personal lives."
Existing studies have already demonstrated how stress related to pressure at work and demands in the job often lead to strains and conflicts with family. This could come as a result of the person being unable or not have the time to "fulfil non-work roles at home", write the authors.
In the new study, Becker demonstrated that people do not even need to do office work at home to experience the harmful effects of working. Just the expectation that they are available to their employers to work when needed was found to increase the strain for employees and their partners or spouses. This is the case even when people do not actually work during in their off time.
Researchers are calling it the "insidious impact of the 'always on' organisational culture", saying that it is "often unaccounted for or disguised as a benefit — increased convenience, for example, or higher autonomy and control over work-life boundaries."
This is because, 'flexible work boundaries' more often than not turn into 'work without boundaries,' and it compromises employee's and their family's health.
