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Even if your office hours are “officially” from nine to five, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve added your work e-mail account to your phone’s mail app and that you check it several times between leaving the office and returning the next morning. While it may not necessarily be a requirement that you do so, you feel an obligation to remain constantly connected to work so that when the time comes for promotions (or, alternatively, lay-offs), your boss knows that you’re committed to your job because you literally never stop working.
However, if you’re working in France, work-life balance just got a hell of a lot easier for you. Starting this new year, France just passed a “right to disconnect” law, requiring that companies with 50 or more employees create policies to limit requirements for out-of-office communication, including giving employees the legal right to ignore work e-mails once they leave the office. If you think this is a dream come true, it gets even better – France has a 35-hour workweek as well, so not only can you turn off your phone when you leave for the weekend, but you’ll have a half-day every Friday as well.
If you’re a workaholic American, which I’m assuming you are since you’re reading PGP, the motivation behind this should come as no surprise – with employees constantly tuned into their work, burn-out records are at an all-time high. By limiting out-of-office technology, France hopes to instill mandatory work-life-balance into their citizens, making them happier at home and more productive at work. Now that your end-of-year bonus has been direct deposited into your checking account, it may be worth considering using your February tax refund check for a one-way plane ticket to a magical land where you only have to work the equivalent of one full-time job a week..
[via Washington Post]
Image via Shutterstock
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Steph W.
Steph W. is a new Master's degree graduate with an intern's salary and six-figure taste. She realizes her expectations far exceed reality, so she spends her days pinning away Loubs she pretends are in her physical closet instead of her virtual one. Her hobbies include attempting to trapping her boyfriend into marriage before he finds out how insane she is and pretending that Black Box wine tastes as good as the kind she could afford when she was gainfully employed. Send her tips for getting out of student debt at recruitchairtsm@gmail.com
@therecruitchair
Snail-eating surrender monkeys.
My job pays me $80 a month for installing the firm email app on my phone.
Deleted it the next day. PGPM.
Oh, I ignore work emails even when I’m at work never mind when I’m not at work and I’m doing just fine in my career. People are missing the point, the older generation will soon die off so either way, there’s gonna be space that needs filling at the top and as long as you keep showing up and doing productive things, you’re gonna move up on a company. There’s a lot of dumb people in positions of power, just wait out the storm and then become an absolute Forrest fire when it’s your turn and burn corporate America to fucking hell!
Sup?
“Hi, my name is Devin. I like stuff, I do stuff, dogs are cool, I’m good at using chop sticks, chicken pad Thai is my spirit animal. I’ve been told that I look like Brad Pitt’s character from the movie Snatch and I make passionate love to women (only)” – if I had Bumble
While many of my colleagues have their work email connected to their phones, I absolutely refuse. I’m fine with busting my ass during the work week but I have to draw the line somewhere for my own sanity. And based on my glowing annual review I don’t think it has had any effect.
My company awards bonuses in January…and pays them in March #PGP
I think that’s pretty standard tbh.
While I think that having a work/life balance is important, these things do not need to be legislated.
While you are working out the details of the terms of employment, things like out of office emails should be discussed and negotiated.
I recently switched jobs from a world-wide company where I worked with offices in Asia and Europe (read: 24/7 emails) to a US-only company where I almost never get after-hours emails. It’s magical.
I think everyone hates the work email on phone until they move up – reality is it’s a lot easier than having to be in the office. Of course I’d rather send a 10 second email than stay late
Who the fuck in their right mind looks at a work email after hours?
People who don’t want to be sitting at the bottom level of the org chart for the rest of their career.
I guess my field of work doesn’t really have that necessarily. I just remember growing up and my dad would be doing work on the weekends and I vowed to never do that. I’d rather spend time with my family than “go up the ladder” necessarily.
There’s a small but vocal group of people in my office that find things to email about after hours that almost certainly could be addressed during normal work hours. In my experience, it’s almost always better to have somebody address a problem fresh and relaxed rather than scrambling outside of normal work hours. If you’re constantly running into critical problems outside of planned work hours, that’s a symptom of a more disturbing issue than people not liking to check emails after work.
Pahahahah
No, that’s what masochists do. Stay late at work if need be, but leave it there.
Everyone…
Seems like I receive more emails after hours or on vacation days than I do during the normal 8-5.
False: not me
We get it dude, it’s hard to type when you’re on the cross, stop rubbing our faces in it.
Siri was a godsend.
Don’t forget about our 5 to 9 weeks vacation 😉