In response to union demands in Germany to protect workers from burnout, Volkswagen has agreed to cut off email access to its corporate BlackBerry users after work. Ok, not all 190,000 of them. The move will only affect about 1,150 VW employees in Germany. But depending on how you look at it, those lucky few will no longer be able to access work emails on their “CrackBerries” a half-hour after their shift ends, until 30 minutes before work begins the next day.
Some say VW is following a trend in Europe. The makers of Persil washing powder in the U.K. declared an email “amnesty” for their workers between Christmas and New Year’s. And the French tech giant Atos recently announced plans to ban all internal work email starting in 2014 so workers will have more time for other things, like work.
WEIGH IN:
Is it time for U.S. companies to give more thought to how much time their employees spend looking at email after quitting time? Might there be a positive payoff in terms of increased productivity or would this be bad for business? Are you drowning in email and desperate for help?
Guest:
Beth Livingston, Assistant Professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell University in the Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) School