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spam

Hear Me Now?

Study shows after-hours work emails provoke anger, disrupt personal lives in employees 

illustration of ocean wave

Employees deluged with after-hours work emails suffer real- world consequences.

America may be a nation of workaholics, but everyone has a limit. For many, that comes in the form of after-hours work emails, which, according to new research from the College of Business, can provoke anger in employees and interfere with their personal lives.

Management Associate Professor Marcus Butts is lead author on “Hot Buttons and Time Sinks: The Effects of Electronic Communication During Nonwork Time on Emotions and Work-Nonwork Conflict,” published in the July issue of Academy of Management Journal. He and his co-researchers surveyed 341 working adults during a seven-day period to track their feelings when they opened a work email away from the office.

“People who were part of the study reported that they became angry when they received a work email or text after they had gone home that was negatively worded or required a lot of their time,” 
Dr. Butts explains. “Also, the people who tried to separate their work lives from their personal lives experienced more work-life interference. The after-hours emails ended up affecting those workers’ personal lives.”

Overall, the researchers identified two major categories of workers: the segmentors and the integrators. The segmentors wanted to keep their personal and work lives separate; not surprisingly, these were the participants most negatively impacted by after-business-hours communications. The integrators wanted to know what was going on at work when they weren’t in the office; while they too got angry when receiving work communications at home, it didn’t interfere with their personal lives.

Rachel Croson, dean of the College of Business, says Butts’ study is important because electronic communications have become part of the fabric of everyone’s lives.

“Smartphones and the accompanying culture of ‘always on’ has made after-hours communication ubiquitous,” she says. “But, like everything else in business, it can be done well or badly, and implementation is critical for success. This study informs leaders not only whether and when, but also how to communicate with employees.”

Illustration by YAREK WASZUL

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