Band 7+: A trend in current times is the need for many workers to spend time outside of company hours answering text and e-mail messages for their jobs. What problems does this cause for the worker? What can be done to reduce the impact of these problems?

Nowadays, it is reckoned that several workers are required to reply to messages and emails relating to their places of work even after regular work hours. An ‘always on duty’ culture may hamper opportunities to mentally detach from the workplace and to limit the untoward effects of such practices, an outright ban should be placed on attending to work commitments beyond the conventional work hours.

One major problem that could result from responding to workplace messages and emails when not at the official duty post is that employees would never fully disengage from their work, leading to mental, physical and emotional stress and in extreme cases, exhaustion. Without a doubt, the problem with after-hours emails is not the time and effort required to respond to them. Rather, the unrealistic expectation that employees should work constantly and respond to emails at all hours can significantly heighten workplace stress. Consequently, work-life balance and job performance falter and workers’ productivity nosedives. A recent survey shows that diminished work detachment due to email-related overload is associated with mental and emotional breakdown in a growing number of organisations in Abuja, Nigeria. This buttresses the fact that workers indeed suffer emotional problems from being unable to disentangle from job emails and messages even when not officially at work.

To mitigate this problem, there should be an unequivocal ban on attending to every work correspondence outside regular work hours. In other words, workers should be mandated and empowered not only to ignore any work-related information beyond the hours of workplace responsibilities but also to report the department from where such messages emanated for appropriate punishment to serve as a deterrent to others. Through this, employees would be able to enjoy their leisure time with utmost serenity without the fear of any organisational reprisals such as being sacked, underpayment and so on for not acting on emails when not at work.

To conclude, workers who keep responding to work emails and messages when not at work could suffer significant mental and emotional damage. To prevent this, every company should enact laws that prohibit every worker from attending to job correspondences outside official work hours.