Contacting your work colleagues after office hours can have a seriously bad effect on them a new study has revealed.
According to the research which was carried out on 341 adults in the workplace over seven days, the majority of participants became extremely angry when they received an email or text from a colleague outside of normal working hours.
Two different types of people emerged from the study. The ‘segmenters’ were people who wanted to keep their work and personal lives separate. They were the ones who were most annoyed when they received the texts or emails.
‘Integrators’ on the other hand, although they also got annoyed with an interruption to their home lives, they still wanted to know what was going on in work.
In the US, 48% of respondents said they used their phone to check work correspondence outside working hours – they also reported high stress levels. The study also revealed that work emails can add up to five hours to the normal working day.
