Reply to post: Re: Not office hours? No contact

This always-on culture we're in is awful. How do we stop it? Oh, sorry, hold on – just had another notification

big_D Silver badge

Re: Not office hours? No contact

Similar here. I have a company phone, but it gets automatically set to silent at 16:30, although I've only been called a grand total of a dozen times on that phone in 3 years.

The company policy is, out of hours, you are unavailable. They encourage us to turn the phone off at night and when we are on holiday, sick etc. I generally don't turn it off, just leave it on silent in my work backpack in the corner of the kitchen.

Same with email etc. only available on a company device, not allowed to put it on private devices. So not contactable outside office hours.

That was a real revelation after my previous employer, where I was berated for only checking my email once a day, when I was on holiday. On my first week of holiday for the new company, I glanced at my emails as I was drinking coffee, saw a problem being discussed that I could answer quickly and called my boss, he thanked me and told me, sternly, to turn off the damned phone and enjoy my leave!

VW used to go one better, when workers came off-shift, the email service to them was capped, until they were due back in the office. That stopped them trying to check on emails in their well earned down-time.

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