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?"

Comments

WHAT?!

[betterunixthanunix]

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...

Re:WHAT?!

[schnell]

accepting calls and emails after hours at no extra pay

See, I don't see it like that. There are many after-hours work calls or e-mails that I actually *want* to get because someone is helping me resolve a time-sensitive issue or because we are in different timezones and our calendars are all full during the day. The calls/e-mails after hours that I don't want, I simply ignore until the next morning. I also travel frequently for work and we will have all-day travel plus customer meetings/dinner that adds up to some very long days. But I have never tried to say that I won't be on an airplane or doing work-related tasks outside of 9-5 pm Monday-Friday.

My colleagues all have the same attitude, where work outside business hours is expected but nobody seems to mind too much, since generally if we put in a lot of extra hours one week, most of us will leave early or otherwise dial back some other week to make up for it. I get paid a pretty good salary to work outside strict "business hours" but I wouldn't put up with being called at 3 am for a firedrill or anything like that.

I'm very genuinely curious about this... whenever I see this discussed on Slashdot, I get the feeling that the majority of posters seem to be IT workers who are upset about being called/interrupted to resolve issues off-hours and hence the mindset about the extra work for no extra pay (that would certainly bother me too). It's definitely not the way I think about my job (I'm a product manager) but I get the feeling my situation is not the norm here. Is the issue that most Slashdotters are "on the clock"/have different job types than me, or is it just the attitude towards work in general?

Re:WHAT?!

[IdolizingStewie]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. If I get a call after hours, I know it's because somebody was on the scene and couldn't fix it, so had to escalate it. That means it's not a small problem, and it needs to be solved now. I'm salary, yeah, so I don't get explicitly paid for that, but making six figures at 25, I figure it's kinda built in. A salary compensates for all the work you do. If it's not high enough, change it, but that doesn't explicitly mean you deserve overtime at the same rate. Maybe the company came up with that salary figuring in extra hours.

Re:WHAT?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I want to know if there's a problem in my datacenter at 3:30 a.m. so I'm not surprised with multiple alarms and users in panic when I come into the office at 8:00 to find a dozen or more helpdesk tickets in my queue and no one able to access their network drives. Similarly, I definitely want to know if the IDS has identified an intrusion at the firewall that requires my personal attention to address, or a DDoS attack on our website that may have taken us down and is costing us money due to lost revenue. I'm paid to handle these problems, whenever and wherever they occur and I am expected to respond, day or night to resolve them before the issue turns into a crisis. It's in my contract.

Re:WHAT?!

[sglewis100]

The article says it's for email only (the phone works, texts work, etc). If your alerting comes via email, you have bigger problems! Especially if it's your email server that's down.

Re:WHAT?!

[iluvcapra]

There are many after-hours work calls or e-mails that I actually *want* to get because someone is helping me resolve a time-sensitive issue or because we are in different timezones and our calendars are all full during the day.

The demand on time is self-fulfilling: you have to address an issue at 9PM because the dependent factor needs it at 10PM, who will be behind if he doesn't have his shit done by 2AM for Mumbai. If you make everyone go-the-hell home then the problem can wait. In the end I think a big part of the evening email correspondence is about employees punishing each other and using their evening uptime to compete with each other and make people who have social lives and families look bad. It isn't very productive and companies that see that sort of dynamic should just take away the toys.

Keeping the furnace running or the servers is a different matter, but why would artists and sales people need to be on call 24-7?

Re:WHAT?!

[Austerity Empowers]

I don't agree. If you're salary and making 6 figures it's because you provide a valuable service for your 40 hours a week, so much that the company doesn't want to risk losing you as they might to contractors who are always looking for their next gig.

Salaried employee doesn't mean "free overtime", it probably doesn't mean punch-in/punch-out either, but I work for a large company you've probably heard of and management truly believes salaried employee means 60 hours on an average week, and nights+weekends at their judgement. That's just an abuse.

With all that said, I don't consider email (provided there is no requirement I respond) to be the greatest evil. Spending all 60 hours of my week in meetings because management has a poor, inefficient organization, staffed with "just good/cheap enough" labor for a job category, split across several countries, with the expectation that I train these weasels, that's the evil.

Re:WHAT?!

[scamper_22]

It's not the norm. I often tell my fellow engineers and IT people. It's not that government, finance, and business are evil. It really is that they don't 'know' any better.

Most of my friends are not in engineering/tech. They all have this perception we're all making Google-like salaries, working as professionals... not much different from lawyers or doctors.

Now back in reality... IT/engineering is not a profession. As a group, we are just worker bees. Albeit, well-paid worker bees for some of us.

I was like you when I first graduated. I didn't view it as a 9-5 job. I solved issues quickly, I shipped well. I took emails at varying hours. I had a lot of passion for the products. I quickly realized... it all didn't matter. Unless I wanted to change career paths into product management or something. So I do just work my basic work now and treat it as a job.

So what are my beefs with working extra hours?
1. Management treats us like fungible parts. So well... I've learned to act like a fungible part (9-5 worker) I can't count the number of times our teams have been reorged and thrown different projects different ways. There is absolutely no treatment for knowledge/maintenance of the product/system.

2. Similar to 1, but I'm not about to play super-hero engineer again and again and again for something I know would be better done if was treated as more of a profession. Keep things staffed properly. Keep quality people and engineers. Keep senior people. We just had a reorg at my work and they laid off several very good senior staff. Yeah... of course they want the rest of us to pick up the slack. Good luck with that.

And yes I know this is a feedback loop. If we acted more like professionals, we'd be treated like them. Unfortunately, I can't change the system on my own... and there are enough poor people in the world and immigration to keep a nice supply of fungible parts.

And yes, the world of product management is different. I've drank with you guys enough times :P I have nothing against anyone busines/finance/product. It is more about how engineers/IT folks have treated their own work and profession and not stood up for their interests which in the end align with the interests of an efficient business.

It won't last

[stevew]

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!

Re:It won't last

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

You mean.. most American companies LIKE to exploit their workers.

Re:It won't last

[Samalie]

It can catch on.

If only there was a group of individuals representing, say, 99% of the people already. With proper organization, they could stop camping in outdoor parks and actually start bringing attention to issues like this, where the average dumb schmuck is being intentionally bent the fuck over by the evil oppressive so-called "job creators" who have a disproportionate share of the wealth in western society.

Without being facetious, in reality these are the kinds of issues the so-called occupy movements should be focusing on...things like this where the average employee is all but powerless to prevent having any balance between their work lives and their personal lives. In theory, it is these types of issues that the Occupy movement is about, but they're soo fucking unfocused and, well, hippie-like that any real thought of an agenda for these guys gets beat to shit.

But this IS a problem. I am taking next week off my work (a whopping 3 working days here) and I had to get "special permission" to turn my fucking smartphone off & not be responsive to email. On my fucking vacation.

Re:It won't last

[causality]

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!

This applies on the personal level in terms of what kind of manager someone is, and on the corporate level in terms of what kind of company it is and the culture they have.

There are of course companies that try to squeeze the most out of everyone with no regard to the impact this has on morale, that treat the employees like furniture or machines. They are looking at short-term productivity. There actually are companies that take a longer view. They realize that happy, enthusiastic workers who feel like they are respected as human beings are actually more productive and more willing to go above and beyond what it takes to merely avoid disciplinary action. It's more of an investment that pays dividends. It's as simple as tit-for-tat: treat your people well and they'll treat you well in return, even when you're not looking.

They encourage a culture of people who are "on board" in more ways that those of a mere mercenary, who actually do want the company to succeed and grow. It's a type of mind-share not available to the "crack the whip and make sure they know their place" style of management. That kind of management might seem effective in the short term but it's suffocating. Eventually it drives away everyone who is talented enough to be marketable and find better positions elsewhere, leaving the company with those who are stuck because they can find nothing better and then de-motivating them.

I think part of the problem with IT is that it's viewed as a maintainence function, like building repair or janitorial services. It's not a sexy bread-winner like the sales department. It tends towards reminding you how replacable you are while under-valuing just how much downtime can actually cost. There really are companies who value in-house expertise and who treat their workers with respect without regard for the type of work they do. They don't do it because they are such saints, of course, but because it works every time it's tried.

There are too many managers and other authority figures who think that once they obtain a title, their word is the decree of some kind of god. They don't feel that a certain responsibility goes along with that and have no idea what it's like to actually earn the confidence of their subordinates. They tend to alienate everyone who works with them. They are also more likely to be the sociopathic types who were willing to say and do anything to obtain that position in the first place and are now more concerned with being in charge than with making wise decisions.

Re:It won't last

[Anonymous Coward]

You do understand the difference between a professional salaried employee versus an hourly employee right?

Re:It won't last

[TheSpoom]

With proper organization

See, it's here where it all falls apart.

Re:It won't last

[GreatBunzinni]

Without being facetious, in reality these are the kinds of issues the so-called occupy movements should be focusing on...things like this where the average employee is all but powerless to prevent having any balance between their work lives and their personal lives.

The concept of a group of workers organizing themselves in order to achieve common goals, such as better working conditions, isn't new. That's the definition of a trade union.

Remind me again why the average US citizen is so violently opposed to the existence of trade unions, let alone joining one?

Re:It won't last

[tomhudson]

Just because you're a professional doesn't mean they own you 24/7 - unless YOU let them.

Re:It won't last

[CimmerianX]

Step 4 - Get fired from your job.

Step 5 - Job hires a tech who has been unemployed for 9 months who is more than willing to be on call after hours for less pay.

Step 6 - You start looking for new work, and you and now more than willing to be on call for a job as well.

Re:It won't last

[bhtooefr]

Largely because unions have gone too far in some industries in the US - the public sector unions have made it so that it's extremely difficult to get rid of poor workers (and in the case of the USPS, the unions have actually made it so that the USPS cannot lay off workers for any reason, meaning that to scale down, the USPS either has to fire 100% of their employees and rehire, which would cause MASSIVE disruption of service, or go out of business entirely (which, well, there are politicians calling for the USPS to be shut down)), and the autoworkers unions have demanded extremely high benefits that have helped make the auto industry in the US uncompetitive.

And, US-style unions actually promote mediocrity - if you are actually more capable, and do more, you get written up by the union for taking work away from a brother.

Also, there is the fact that the corporate-owned media says that the whole idea of a union is evil.

Unions can do a lot of good, but the kind that we have here... not so much.

Of course, single-payer healthcare and maybe a GOOD retirement system would actually go a long way towards reducing the negative influence that unions have...

Re:It won't last

[Samalie]

I have a wife and 3 kids. Self-respect doesn't feed, clothe, or shelter any of them.

Re:It won't last

[arkane1234]

Neither does serfdom.

Re:It won't last

[supercrisp]

I have limited experience with being a union worker, but in both cases, the union promoted good work, supported good workers, and bad workers met with peer pressure to get out or get good. I don't know about the UAW or whatever union the post office has. But I am pretty sure that a lot of stuff said about unions is no more true than stuff said about gay people, "colored" people, etc.. In other words, I bet a lot of it is a bunch of divisive lies spewed by "1%" to keep the "99%" distracted and effectively disenfranchised.

Re:It won't last

[artor3]

Astounding. You know that the corporate media is filling your head with lies about unions, and even say as much, and yet in the very same post you repeat those lies as gospel. If ever there was a clear demonstration of the insidious power of propaganda, this is it.

Re:It won't last

[oxdas]

The German system of both unions and corporate governance are very different than America. In Germany, workers must have just under half of all seats on the board of directors (although the president of the board comes from the shareholders). This makes workers and unions influential in setting the corporate direction of all German companies above 2,000 people. The idea of a union in many countries is also very different. In the United States, unions are adversarial organizations. In many countries, however, unions are cooperative groups that work for the best of the workers and company as a whole. It is important to also note that the idea of companies existing solely to benefit shareholders is not the dominant paradigm in most countries.

Re:It won't last

[vux984]

I have seen this (from a union member): arrive at job site, sit in trucks for 45 minutes, get out, turn a knob/fiddle with stuff for 5 minutes, get back in truck for 45 minutes, walk up to customer, ask for signature, get back in truck, wait 15 minutes, drive off property.

I have seen this: (from a non union member): arrive at job site, perform task booked for 2hrs in 5 minutes, drive truck accross street to the park, take 1.75hr nap, drive off.

Lazy irresponsible people are everywhere.

Re:It won't last

[houghi]

I think it is due to the way Unions work in the USofA. As far as I understand you have no choice in what Union you get. You get into the Union of that profession.

e.g. if you are a screen writer, you go to the screenwriters union or you can't even get a job at certain companies.

We communist Europeans believe a bit in choice. I can get to any of three Unions. OK, Three is not a big choice, but it is more then one.
I also can decide NOT to go to a union. If a union gets a deal done, this will be done for ALL employees, not only union members.

Oh and on Unions and media. Yesterday the strike in Belgium included part of the media.

Re:It won't last

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know... I sort of like unions. They gave us stuff like:

Weekends.
Holidays off.
Sick time.
Worker's comp.
Vacation time.
40 hour work-weeks in theory.
Pension plans.

Oh, they took our kids out of the coal mines and allowed them to get an education, which means they might be able to compete against the Chinese children who get calculus 101 in the eighth grade, or the Europeans who already know 3-5 languages before high school.

Turn off sync

[Anonymous Coward]

or ignore it.

Re:Turn off sync

[Smallpond]

or ignore it.

Seems like there should be plug-in timers for turning off pop/imap when you don't want to be bothered. I've read that to be efficient you should download and check your email no more than a couple of times per day. Have time set aside 1st thing in am, noon, and late afternoon to read and deal with it, and don't let it pop up, speak or distract you the rest of the day.

Re:Turn off sync

[0123456]

I've read that to be efficient you should download and check your email no more than a couple of times per day. Have time set aside 1st thing in am, noon, and late afternoon to read and deal with it, and don't let it pop up, speak or distract you the rest of the day.

If you ignore your email then people start phoning you, which is far more distracting.

8 to 5

[varmittang]

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.

Re:8 to 5

[tixxit]

I had one coworker who was upset that people expected her to immediately respond to e-mails (during working hours). To drive home the point that e-mail is NOT an interactive communication medium and it is unreasonable to expect an immediate reponse, she decided to look at her e-mails only twice per day (literally closing her mail client inbetween). She told everyone that anything which needed an immediate response should be communicated in person or on the phone. It worked well!

Banning internal e-mail

[Xest]

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?

Re:Banning internal e-mail

[Surt]

Most corporate IM systems log everything.

Re:Banning internal e-mail

[Chelloveck]

It's not even cynical, it's a statement of fact. I've had corporate lawyers tell me flat out, "Don't save anything. Delete all email after 30 days. Don't save IM logs. If we're in a court situation and the other side is subpoenaing our email records, they *will* be able to take innocent messages out of context and make them sound damning. Don't make it easy for them."

Stop checking it, then?

[Pope]

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.

Re:Stop checking it, then?

[Scutter]

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's not a technology problem. It's a cultural problem. It's easy to say "just ignore it!" but if your work culture expects it, then you're "not a team player" and it will eventually catch up to you. I recommend finding another company, personally, but in many areas the job market is pretty tough and having to be available after hours is better than not having a job.

Re:Stop checking it, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew a spine once. Immediately afterward, I was out of work for 19 months.

captcha: hungry

This is idiotic.

[NeutronCowboy]

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.

Re:This is idiotic.

[grumling]

The beauty of email is that it is asynchronous.

That once was true, but in the blackberry infested world I live in, the difference between email and IM is negligible.

Oh, except that the whole department chain of command is copied on every email (and adds their 2 cents), while most haven't figured out how to have more than a 2 way conversation on IM.

Re:This is idiotic.

[Minwee]

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

Um, they're not turning off _your_ mail server, they're just turning off their own.

Way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, cavemen using primative SMTP servers fashioned from stone knives, bear skins and RFC 821 figured out how to store and forward email, and if the remote server was not available then to try again later. If your SMTP service is unable to deliver mail despite transient errors then please contact your network administrator about it.

If you are your network administrator, but have misconfigured your mail server, there is no need for ritual suicide. You can cleanse yourself of most of the shame by reading the appropriate documentation and fixing the problem.

Volkwasgen

[sunderland56]

Apparently they turned off spell checking as well.

No surprise, it's Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:No surprise, it's Germany

[assertation]

Are you accepting American immigrants?

Sounds like a bad idea...

[Kjella]

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.

Wait A Minute!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Other motives

[Charliemopps]

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.

Atlantic Dis-Union

[andersh]

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.

Different approach

[swillden]

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.

Social-Democracy Works

[andersh]

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.