When work intrudes after hours in the form of pings and buzzing smartphone alerts, it can cause power surges that lead to a host of ill effects for employees, including negative work recovery and insomnia. But according to research co-authored by a team of University of Illinois researchers studying work stress and employee well-being, those who had more "boundary control" over their work and personal lives were better at creating a stress buffer that helped them avoid that they fell into a trap.
Information communication technologies such as smartphones and tablets enable employees to work anytime, anywhere, blurring work and non-work boundaries. But that convenience comes at the cost of increased stress and mental health problems for workers unless they have control over the boundaries between work and non-work, said YoungAh Park, a professor of industrial and industrial relations at Illinois.
“Most people simply cannot work without a smartphone, tablet or laptop,” she said. “These technologies are so ubiquitous and useful that it may lead some people to think that employees should always be reachable or always available. Obviously, this kind of intrusion into the home or private domain after hours is unhealthy, and our research shows that an always-on mentality has a major drawback in the form of increased work stress.”
In the study, Park and co-authors surveyed more than 500 full-time school teachers in the classroom to measure their weekly work intrusion through technologies for five consecutive weeks.
“We asked about their weekly technology breach, especially their after-hours work – whether they were expected to respond promptly to work-related messages and emails, and whether they were contacted after office hours about work-related issues. ,” she said.
The researchers found that teachers' adoption of technology boundary tactics, such as disabling work email alerts on smartphones, was related to a lower perception of weekly work intrusion.
The study builds on recent scholarship about how dealing with work-related demands outside of office hours is becoming an increasingly important issue for employees, said Yihao Liu, an Illinois professor of labor and industrial relations and co-author of the study.
“Managing your work-life balance through border control is not only beneficial for you and your family, it can also benefit your colleagues as they may also need to read back and forth and respond to messages people send after the working day,” he said. “Setting a good line between work and normal life will help more people and more stakeholders. In general, it is critical that people manage their work-life boundaries for their own health and well-being, as well as for their own productivity and their colleagues' "productivity."
While the study only included primary school teachers in the sample, the findings about drawing clear boundaries after work should hold true for most workers, the researchers said.
