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Volkswagen Turns Off E-mail After Work-Hours
wired_parrot writes "Responding to complaints from employees that email outside of working hours was disrupting their lives, Volkswagen has taken the step of shutting their email servers outside work-hours. Other companies have taken similar steps, with at least one taking the extraordinary step of banning internal e-mail altogether. Is this new awareness of the disruption work email brings on employee's personal life a trend?"
Here I was thinking that we were supposed to be connected to our jobs 24x7, accepting calls and emails after hours at no extra pay:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/12/02/1350229/us-senator-proposes-bill-to-eliminate-overtime-for-it-workers
Oh, wait, Volkswagen is not an American company. Carry on then, respecting your workers and whatever it is that you foreigners do...
Palm trees and 8
I don't expect this to catch on...either that or it will move to some other social media vehicle like Twitter. Most companies LIKE the fact that they can get their employees free efforts after hours!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
or ignore it.
I don't check my email outside of business hours. If something breaks that needs fixing, call me, otherwise I can wait until tomorrow between 8 to 5.
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The thing about banning internal e-mail was originally labelled by the press of doing away with e-mail altogether, which it wasn't. The article on it on the BBC was actually quite interesting, I was dismissive of the idea at first, but it was a pretty good article and worth opening your mind to.
My only concern is about auditing, if communications occur by IM, then where is the audit trail?
Seriously, just stop checking your work email device. Or shut it off. If you're not on-call or senior management, as TFA says, you're not in your working hours and should just ignore the damn thing.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The beauty of email is that it is asynchronous. I can send an email, and people will get to it when they can. It's worldwide, near instant, and pretty much perfect delivery. I don't have to worry about them sitting at their desk right this moment, or be working right this moment. Write detailed email, send, and wait for reply. If it's urgent, follow up with a phone call, but otherwise, it's fire and forget.
If Volkswagen is turning off the email servers, I can't even do that. I actually have to wait to send the email until they are working, and that might mean that I have to work while I'm supposed to be off. After all, my working hours might not coincide with theirs.
I can't see this last very long. Besides, the solution is obvious and much less technically complex: have people not answer their email after working hours. Yes, it takes practice, but I've learned to ignore my crackberry after hours. If it's urgent, people will call.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It wouldn't be so bad if email was entirely passive. However, these days people get email on their phones, and emails marked as urgent can be programmed to ring the phone. Employees emailing something as urgent may not quite recognized that "take care of this first thing tomorrow morning" urgent isn't the same as "the plant is on fire" urgent.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
They should just do what my company does, which is acknowledge that while we are salaried, it's unethical to lean on that to squeeze out a lot of unpaid work. It's this revolutionary idea that "can" doesn't mean "should" which in this day and age of minimalist ethics which are bound to the razor edge of what the letter of the law or contract allows is too radical for many managers.
Parent disables access to content/services because the children can't control/defend themselves.
If employees WANT to send emails, they should be able to do it and not complain about it
If employees are FORCED by bosses/managers to work/check emails when they don't WANT to, then that should be reported
We all know how awesome parental controls are if you just disable and don't pay any more attention - the problem will perpetuate by mutation.
Apparently they turned off spell checking as well.
In Europe we take care of life quality more than in the US.
In Germany average working hours are 35 per week, at 5 pm everybody is back home. They have about 30 days a year of vacation, and a very efficient and generous government-run welfare system that covers simply anything: retirement, healthcare, etc... Almost nobody pays for a private healthcare insurance, simply because they don't need it.
However, average tax rates are quite high: about 50% of the gross income, including social security contributions.
No room for tea-partiers in Germany, sorry...
So you call, and two minutes into the conversation it goes "I need to take a look at that log file..." or any other crunch time/shit hit the fan moment, then what? I leave my phone on 24x7 too, because I expect everyone to have good graces and not call me at 3 AM unless it's a really big emergency. It's a matter of culture, if you have to implement technical measures to stop people from acting like sociopaths you're doing it wrong. If people max the rules, then it won't be a nice place to work no matter what.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The article doesn't clearly state it, but VW does NOT shutdown its email system. They stop emails from being pushed to individual users' Blackberrys when the user's shift is over. The email continues to flow into their inbox, and the Blackberry still enjoys a flood of email 30 minutes before their shift starts the next day. It's actually a nice feature of Blackberry and Exchange software that they simply turned on.
This does not reduce the number of emails that they get or the spam or anything else. It just stops delivery to the Blackberry after hours.
I simply ignore my work email when I am off. I don't bother checking it. I'd gladly clock in and check my email if they allowed over time, but hell will freeze over before I work for free. If a job doesn't want you on facebook, personal phone calls, doing anything else in your personal life while on clock why the hell should they expect me to do anything work related during my personal time? Road goes both ways...you can't tell me no personal life at work then invade my personal life away from work....
Don't these companies communicate with anyone overseas? Here in the USA I coordinate with people in the UK, and email is what lets me do that during my work hours instead of having to come in extra early or them extra late.
The company that outright banned e-mail is just chaining their employees to IM and its demand for a real-time response. They're making it *worse*
union works now this why in the USA It needs them so are not chained to work off hours and not only that they want to work late and then you get reamed for showing up late that next day.
Turn off automatic notifications and don't check your email outside working hours.
Volkswagen's solutions fixes the symptoms, but not the cause. Besides, when you _do_ need to send a message outside working hours, how are you supposed to do that?
.: Max Romantschuk
I find it odd that email is to blame, email is not the issue the issue is behavior of people, because even if you rid yourself of email then whatever you have switched too will then suddenly become the problem.
In the case of Atos the face to face option is a good idea, as most people will decide what would have been easy to send in email isn't worth the bother of face time or at the very least will suddenly seem less crucial, however their switch to "chat-type collaborative services" is unlikely to be any better than email unless they have a "chat time moderator" to keep everyone in line and on track.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Crazy idea here, what about *not* taking your email when not at work?
I know it's a long shot, but hey, it's worth a try...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Recently the company I work for implemented a new system that auto-archives your email after 2 weeks. You can go to the archive to view the mail, for up to 6 months. At 6 months it deletes the email. It may be saved elsewhere for a period before permanent deletion, I'm not sure. But I do know it gets irrecoverably destroyed at some point. You can not create a PST, and they've got services scanning the network and local hard drives for PSTs, then deleting them. Saving email in any way is a violation of our code of conduct. There's even a faq that poses the question "I found a print out of an email that is over 6 months old, I feel it is important, can I keep it? Answer: No, shred the document immediately."
The company didn't try to hide their reasons. They told us flat out it was for legal liability. People are a tad too cavalier in what they'll put in an email, and later, in court, email is treated like formal marching orders rather than the casual conversation it often is. There is even talk of doing away with work email all together, again for liability reasons. All "Marching orders" should come in the form of formal documentation. We have a chat system that can not be set to archive conversations that we're to use for the types of casual work talk we used to use email for.
From what the lawyers were telling me, industry wide legal advise is to get rid of email all together. They said a lot of companies are starting pilot projects to see how well their workers can do their jobs without it, and to get them used to the idea of not having it.
Guns don't kill people; people kill people! Or in the case of email, managers kill people. Don't blame a useful tool for the indiscretions of managers and/or the lack of self control & discipline demonstrated by their employees. Rather than eliminating email, why not study the work that occurs after hours and go after the true culprit to the proclaimed disruptions to private lives.
How about just don't carry your work phone when you're not at work.
A friend of mine use to work for Sony in Germany. They had a similar thing there. They would be disciplined for checking e-mail after work hours due to German labor laws. If you checked e-mail, it was considered overtime work. She said they went so far as to have security walk thru the building asking people to leave after 5:00pm.
Also it was illegal to work on Sunday or Holidays. Again, checking email would qualify you as working, so they were very strict about remote VPN access on those days unless it was absolutely required.
I'm not sure if Germany has relaxed these rules in recent years. If they haven't then the no-email after work sounds like they are trying to confirm with the law, not that they are trying to be nice.
Am I the only one here who doesn't really mind?
First, unless there is tremendous pressure to read and respond quickly, or unless there is a massive amount of after-hours email, I don't see the problem. Sometimes the second shift manager needs to make an immediate decision. If so, he might as well TRY to get my input. Sometimes I see it in time, sometimes I don't. But the email itself doesn't hurt anyone.
Second, I actually enjoy it when I find out someone on another shift has solved a big problem for me. Or that my rush delivery arrived an hour after I left. Or that our Asian sales team met their forecast at 1 AM EST. A small weight is lifted from my shoulders and I sleep a little bit better that night.
Third, when bad news does come via email, I much prefer to receive ASAP, rather than in a big batch first thing each morning. Personally, I tend to react more calmly and more logically if I have time to think. No one expects me to solve a problem at 9 PM, so all I need to do is file it away mentally. By morning, I've had the time I need to calm down and approach the situation rationally. If five minutes of my time at 9 PM can save an hour of frustration at 9 AM, I'm happy to do it.
This actually has become a real problem. I'm on call all the time unless on vacation or other exceptions. I get compensated for being on call, $35/day + 2 hour minimum call out for the first call out of the night. However, there's a lot of email alerts that go out over the blackberry that I check. According to the company, I'm supposed to record the time spent checking email after normal working hours. This includes if I get a phone call during lunch.
This sounds great, but trying to keep track of that time is so much of a hassle and the reward isn't really worth it. I figure that if I have to take care of a true outage/etc, it counts as a call out. If I'm just checking the alarms, that's just a normal part of being on-call. If I get interrupted at lunch or my boss calls me on his way home, well, that just means I can leave a little early on Fridays and no one is going to say anything.
Next year, due to equipment upgrades and installation of redundant systems, I'll be able to go into an on-call rotation with my coworkers who are also now always on call. As far as I'm concerned, when I'm not on call, the BB gets set to "silent" and sits on the charger until tomorrow. My coworkers have my home number if they have a SHTF problem, but otherwise the NOC won't call and tickets won't go to me outside of normal business hours. Of course, if my coworkers do call, that becomes straight overtime or possibly call-out, depending on severity and my involvement in the issue. But if I'm out of cell range and miss the call I won't lose any sleep over it either.
But I'm paid hourly, not salary. If more employees were paid hourly I'm sure we'd be much better off. It makes it obvious who's doing the work and who's just getting by, because hours worked becomes a measurable metric. In a salary situation you're depending on the few employees who give a shit to stay late and make sure the work gets done, while there's others who either waste a ton of time or leave at 5:00 no matter what.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Why should I buy a car from a company where the employees aren't capable of managing themselves?
So, what happens next. If an employee cannot be reached by email, do you call them? Then what? Will Volkswagen turn off their phones because the employees are complaining how much phone calls are disrupting their lives?
Honestly, what a bunch of losers!
There's a simpler solution that one of the guys at work does:
He simply does not read his work e-mail outside of work. EVER. It makes it really simple to keep work and non-work separate. And since he's the office manager, he gets his way.
Just because your sending an IM now, or a tweet, or a facebook group or something doesn't meant someone is sitting on the other end reading it. So how is that different than email? I know people who set their status invisible in IM's because it has gotten so annoying. I find IM's take much longer for me to understand what the person on the other end wants. Typical scenario:
coworker: Hi
Me: Hi
coworker: typing for seems like an eternity and I know as soon as I switch away that damn taskbar icon will start blinking. I wait, and wait, get annoyed, switch to a new window, blink blink blink!!
Its surprising in this day in age that most IT workers still can't type worth a damn.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
The feature that I've been waiting for pretty much ever since mobile phones became common is the ability to run two sim cards in the same phone and have a switch that can turn either or both on/off.
I've always kept my work and private stuff seperate - e-mail, phone numbers, etc. - but if you don't want to carry two phones with you everywhere, that's actually very hard to do.
I would love a phone that allows me to tell it "I'm at work now" and then enables the work-related mail account, phone number, etc. - outside work hours, all work-related stuff goes to voicemail, server-side inbox, etc. and with no notification.
And the reverse is just as important - "not available for private things now" can be a crucial setting (the people who might have reason to reach you anyways in case of emergencies would have your work phone number anyways).
So there are scenarios where you would want one enabled, but not the other. There are also scenarios where you would want both enabled, like when you're on the train during a business trip, or at your desk and don't mind getting private and/or work calls intermixed.
I would really, really love a phone that supports something like that. I fear the general trend is still getting the boundaries between work and private life blurred more and more. Most people have no idea what they're doing to themselves there. Been there, done that, seen others burn out - don't do this. And find gadgets that don't do it to you.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This kind of 'protection' is what creates sheeple from more and more people everywhere. Instead of thinking about what is moral, ethical, appropriate behaviour, they are teached to expect that every social or work situation is solved for them by the laws or company rules and so they can conveniently stop using their brain.
n/t
The problem I see is that people use their personal devices for work or work devices for personal. It should be the individual's responsibility to separate their work life from their personal life. A company can't force you to use your personal property for work--so don't do it. If you are trying to be a cheapskate and use your work phone or notebook for your personal business, you are a) setting yourself up to be inundated with company communication during work hours and b) allowing your company to snoop on you because after all it is their phone. Go and buy a separate phone or notebook for your personal life that doesn't have your work communication associated with it. Then leave your work devices off. Problem solved. I think it is ludicrous that a company has to shut it's email servers down at night and weekends. There are different parts of a large organization that doesn't fit into the 9 to 5 mold. If I were the CIO at Volkswagen I would create an employee policy that requires employees to separate their work and personal digital lives. And it is the employee's responsibility to keep their personal and work life separate. Additionally, emails with company domains not be used for ANY personal communication of any kind. This protects the employee's privacy, it protects the company's reputation in regards to public blog posts and illicit websites, and it lowers the amount of spam/marketing emails the company email servers need to deal with. I worked for a large company with over 2000 employees and a clueless CIO. I managed the web development team and tried to convince them to have a stiffer work vs personal policy (also to use Linux and open source software, but that's another story). But corporate structures being the way they are, I could never get much traction.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
Who cares about some (presumably) small company called Volkwasgen?
They're probably some domain/INC/GMBH squatters with only a PO box and two part-time monkeys making sure the domains are renewed and ads are working. Who cares if they don't get email after-hours?
IT should be learn on job like maintenance or tech school but they want CS so you get people who don't have the right skills.
For example, I'd much rather find out that our database server failed at noon on a Sunday, as opposed to 8:00 AM the following Monday.
Most people here are talking about companies demanding your time and saying the "no email" policy flies in the face of that. You've got it wrong.
Email does not interrupt your lunch, your love life, etc. Phone calls do interrupt your life and take away from personal time.
You can bet anyone shutting down their email over a break *will* be phoning people in place of that. You didn't get more of your life back, you got more of it taken away, and immediately so. With email, one can always respond when there is a better time. That is the great thing about email. Too bad if 11 to 19 year olds don't get email. Since when are they the brains and wisdom? If we were to follow their lead we would assume you can make a living playing WOW or COD. etc.
Most of our IT is outsourced, which means most communication from IT (like, "we are pleased to be going to be patching these servers right now") occurs at whatever the daylight hours are in Burhanpur, which is not when it's daylight here. And so you have to monitor email essentially 24 hours a day to be able to catch stuff like this and call overseas to halt another unscheduled Production downtime. Yes, it's a huge pain in the butt (welcome to outsourcing), however, simply ignoring the messages (by turning off email) would result in all sorts of hilarious cock-ups. I'm surprised Volkswagen manages to make such a policy work.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"Volkwasgen Turns Off E-mail After Work-Hours"
You guys misspelled Volkswagen in the title.
I haven't ever used or (that I know of) seen what the Blackberry's email client looks like, but my understanding is that it's highly integrated with the device's UI, moreso than what would be considered "normal" (I don't mean that in a disparaging way) -- they're practically thought of as portable email clients rather than phones or PDAs. No?
On every email system I've seen, it is impossible for the server merely being up, to cause people to be disrupted. If you don't check your email outside of business hours, then it lacks the capacity to disrupt you. Some email clients might be a little more attention-grabbing than others when they detect new emails exist, but even the worst of them (that I've seen!) don't just suddenly grab focus or something like that. The "b" in "biff" is a metaphor.
Is Blackberry different in this way? Is there something unusual about its UI that makes new email particularly hard to ignore?
I know a handful of people at Microsoft who write automated email scripts to make them appear to be "working" at 2am for their bosses.
What ever will they do now?
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
In the financial industry, it's becoming modus operandi to only retain email for a 6-month period and then after that it's destroyed. We're being told that if something is important, we're going to be given a "15 month" folder to keep it in, after which, it will then be destroyed.
There's an internal effort to reduce paper waste as well, so we're being told to not print emails. So basically, they are hoping we can commit everything to grey-matter, even though I deal with hundreds of documents a day.
I fear we are moving towards a corporate version of Fahrenheit 451.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I have to say that my work email has no benefit at all to my job.
Sort of puts a dent in things for those people.
Besides, why turn it off? Just tell people they don't have to deal with after hours email. Problem solved.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There's absolutely no way you can compare the various European countries with the US. There's just so much variety here in Europe, not a single country looks or acts like the US labor market. The UK, while English-speaking and Common Law, is still "socialist" by comparison.
To say nothing of the much more "socialist" Scandinavian countries [where I live]. In my country the unions work in cooperation with the employers' union. If there's a dispute the government's negotiator will do his job and find a reasonable compromise. I believe this describes Germany as well. Unions are not like and do not behave like American "unions".
My country has been ruled by a Labor government more or less since the early 1900s, and both employers and workers are firmly in agreement about what is acceptable practices. Everyone from government ministers to CEOs leave work at 16-17 to pick up their children in the kindergarten/after-school program or go home to eat dinner. While there are people that work later than that, here we emphasize a work/life balance, and the employers understand.
I think Microsoft's Lync, Windows Phone's TellMe and their recent Skype purchase makes a lot of sense. Why should the average worker have to type in the future?
Video and voice-to-text makes a lot more sense. Just look at Apple's Siri. Maybe even some Kinect?
You're a nasty little troll. I wouldn't want to buy products made with pure slave labor or American worker-slaves. You don't know how badly American workers are treated by comparison.
VW is taking responsibility and acting in line with the labor laws and contracts they have. If you're not paid to work, e-mail is work, you shouldn't be asked to work for free.
I would gladly buy a VW in support of fair labor practices!
Yes, you might, but does everyone else in the company need to know? That's one person versus possibly thousands. I realize we agree, but I just wanted to point out the difference.
I think we can agree that it's easy to let you know [by email/SMS/IM] that something's wrong without the corporate email servers being on?
I think Microsoft is making a killing in the market with their Lync IM product(s). I see them pushing it everywhere now, and people seem to be buying it for good reasons (part of their Office 365 service).
Especially now that you have secure lines of communication with [federated] customers and partners.
What's the point of sending a message that won't be read? If it's internal e-mail it won't be read by the recipient.
If you're trying to reach someone outside of the company you're likely doing actual work. There are probably provisions for people with 24/7 roles. Maybe they have their own separate server? German labor law is clear on the subject, you're not supposed to work outside of office hours.
I realize the security, maintenance, transport departments and so on work after office hours. VW probably knows this.
One approach to work/life balance is to strictly segregate them: Be at work, working, from 8-5, then be at home, not working.
That's fine for people who want to do that, but it's not the only way to maintain a reasonable balance. I'm generally in the office from 7-4, but I'm not necessarily working all of that time. On average I spend 1-2 hours of each work day dealing with personal stuff -- keeping up with my bills, fielding phone calls about my kids at school (I have one daughter who is really challenging), out running errands for my wife. I probably spend another hour screwing around on-line: slashdot, G+, etc. Once in a while I even leave the office entirely for a two or three hours because I want to go to a kid's production at school, or because I feel like working out, or whatever. As a result, I don't feel in the slightest that I'm giving "my time" away to the company when I check e-mail in the evening. Heck sometimes I'm working on some particularly interesting bit of code and I even decide to work on it at night after the family is in bed... not because I feel obligated but because it's fun.
For me, strictly segregating work and not-work would be a poorer work/life balance than having the flexibility to do non-work stuff during business hours and work stuff during non-business hours.
I'd rather manage the balance myself than have the company mandate it one way or another. I understand that for people with driving personalities this can lead to excessive work, and I understand that some managers can see this as a way to wring every last minute from their employees. I don't have the first problem and the times I've had the second, I've fixed it by getting a different manager, one way or another.
Beyond my personal preferences, I think the "strict segregation" approach is rather unnatural. It wasn't really even possible as a widespread lifestyle until the Industrial Revolution. Throughout human history, work and non-work have largely been inseparably mixed, both just parts of "life". I like it that way.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
No, you don't have to, that's the employer's problem. Is it really your problem what your employer pays in taxes?
That's the most stupid argument I've heard Americans use. An old and tired "argument" of no significance.
The Germans have their own armed forces, perfectly capable and well equipped. The US is not defending Germany or Europe. Those bases in Germany are there to serve US interests abroad. Much further away.
Greece and Spain are not the greatest markets for German products, the whole world buys from Germany. China is a major customer of German goods. If the Euro becomes cheaper it will just help their export economy.
Socialism is not a problem, except in your imagination, I'm sorry, but there are plenty of successful "socialist" states in Europe. From Germany to Sweden. The Greeks are not an example of socialist malpractice, they're an example of corruption, mismanagement and overspending.
Responding to email after work is a trade-off for all the time I spend at work doing things like reading this.
...just ignoring stuff? To untechnical a solution?
What is "Volkwasgen"
How many on here expect their ISP to have tech support on site 24/7? Or have a venue available when your site's host has problems? As costumers we want this level of support, but many on /. who provide this support for their company don't want to be bothered outside normal business hours.
Occupy represents me too. I am a self employed computer programmer who has plenty of work.
Is someone gets caught stealing a carton of cigarettes from a store he will likely spend a few days in jail. If someone illegally downloads a few songs he can be fined thousands of dollars.
But when criminals on Wall Street screw up peoples pensions and trash the economy with their get rich quick schemes, they get huge bonuses. The companies that perpetrated these frauds got bailed out. No one was held accountable. No major player in the scandal was held accountable.
The government takes a large chunk of my pay as taxes. Corporations make billions and often pay no taxes.
That is why I support Occupy.
Anyone remember that ad where a euro-ish delivery driver thinks to hisself, "I am bored today ... the bourgeoisie businessmen and their packages!"
Every morning my inbox is full of requests from co-workers in Asia, Europe, and South America. They shouldn't be allowed to send email outside of MY working hours.
What happened to 9 to 5? 8 hours, right?
Union leaders had links to organized crime about 40 years ago, like Jimmy Hoffa.
The possible problems with fascism in nations with extreme right-wing parties fueled by religious fanaticism is also not imaginary.
So-called "socialism" in Europe is in reality a mixed system, a balance between free market capitalism and socialist ideas. The word in itself is misleading, then again most Americans don't understand the difference between socialism, communism and social-democracy.
It is curious that you would draw lines between "socialism" and National-socialism, I'm afraid I strongly disagree with you on that. Frankly, I think you're crazy to suggest there's even a link. I have heard Americans claim as much, especially post-WWII anti-Communist propaganda, but that's not the accepted truth here. The NSDAP literally fought and legally banned both social-democrats and communists, the Nazis took power in cooperation with their right-wing Conservative friends of the DNVP.
The real thing with e-mail etc is that one ought treat it as an electronic inbox, and not something to dance to every beck and call.
One works on a variety of tasks, rifling the inbox for the next task. It's the same with inbox stuff. You might assess incoming tasks for urgency and importance, but if you jumped to every task as it hits the desk, ye'd never get nothing done.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I think your reply says an awful lot about your work environment, hehe :)
I imagine we'll use speech-to-text for most interfaces in combination with gestures of some kind. I doubt we'll use it for writing long documents, but perhaps for the draft.
IM can be useful, but as you correctly pointed out, it does take some people and awful long time to write a sentence. That might change as we hire younger workers, depending on your industry and department.
I don't regard Lync as just another IM client, I see it in conjunction with Tango, Skype and similar services. It's a video phone conference tool across many devices with IM and desktop sharing. That long phone call can be replaced with a visual medium where you can give more or less subtle cues to indicate when you've had enough. Doesn't sound a little better at least?
The future the way I see it is; email for long messages or external communication, Sharepoint and similar for document exchange, actual meetings for discussions, speech-to-text for SMS and quick IMs, IMs for short exchanges and finally video calls preferably over phone calls.
That how it's developing where I work now [with the exception of speech-to-text due to my native languages].
I have email for my work. I have email for my personal life. When I leave my office and go home I stop checking my email. When I get to work the next day I start checking it again. Every once in a while I may log in from home to check my work email. I don't understand why the company needs to enforce this. If their employees want to check email at all hours of the night let them.
I suppose technology can never solve the real problems in an organization, it's just another tool for the employees.
If they keep it up, they'll soon have a communist revolution in their hands.... oh, wait..
They are trying to use a technical solution to address a social problem. Train the people to be professional and respectful of their co-workers' time and the problem will take care of itself. Besides, if my incoming emails become too troublesome, I adjust my notifications, and deal with the emails when I need to, not when they arrive. I don't want the company controlling that valve for me. It's a clumsy way to try to address the problem.
Words, words, words