It's becoming increasingly difficult to unplug from work in this age.
After a person signs off, they may feel pressured to respond to any after-hours emails that come up on their phones, even if they aren't urgent.
Researchers from Cornell University and the London Business School have identified simple email etiquette as a way to set healthier boundaries between work and personal life and reduce stress.
A single sentence is all that is required to be added at the end of an email after-hours. It should read: "This isn't an urgent matter, so it is possible to get to it whenever is convenient."
That's all. It's true, even though you may think it goes unspoken.
These findings are based on a study that involved 852 full-time workers in the United States. They were randomly divided into two groups: the hypothetical sender and hypothetical receiver.
Researchers asked the senders how fast they expected someone to respond to their emails. The receivers responded as quickly as they could.
These findings show that communication is at a breaking point, leading to "the email urgency bias", as the authors call it.
Email senders don't expect to get a response within minutes of sending an urgent request. However, recipients are less likely to understand the message. They often assume that all emails need to be responded to quickly, which can lead to a stressful mental state.
It's good to know that email urgent biases and stress can be relieved by stating explicitly in an email that an immediate reply is not required.
The study's authors write that "from a practical perspective our research can help reduce the spread of unhealthy workplace cultures where employees feel pressured into staying connected to their work even though they are not expected to,"
"Email continues to be a primary mode of communication at work and one of the most popular online activities. Our goal is not to reduce its negative impact, but to improve it."
These recommendations were based on six psychological experiments that were conducted with six different cohorts.
More than 700 Spanish public sector workers were included in the first study. They were asked to rate their happiness with their current work/life balance. The participants then shared their experiences with receiving and sending emails during their off-work hours.
Researchers wanted to find out, using a sliding scale, whether participants were expecting someone to respond to their emails quickly or how important it is that someone answers an email in the real world.
Similar to the US group, there was a mismatch between the expectations of the sender as well as the receiver. The sender often expected a prompt response while the receiver was more likely to expect a quick reply.
Subjective wellbeing scores were lower for employees who are more susceptible to this "email urgency bias".
The second study examined the stress associated with high expectations. This time, it was done among 251 participants. Participants were divided into hypothetical email recipients and hypothetical senders.
The email sender was asked to imagine they had just returned from work, and that they checked their email to see if there was a non-urgent message. The email senders were asked the opposite scenario. They had to imagine that their colleague had left, but that they still had a question.
The authors then asked both groups how fast they expected to respond. The authors discovered that receivers believed they had to respond faster than the senders.
Over 600 participants participated in the third study. It found that non-urgent and urgent emails sent after work hours are treated fairly similarly. Fourth study with 411 participants found that emails sent during working hours and after-hours are treated in the same way.
This means that all emails from work, no matter when they were sent or how urgent, seem urgent to us. This urgency can be detrimental to our health, especially if it reaches our evenings.
A fifth study involving 450 participants found that email response time expectations can increase stress in a person's lives, which could lead to lower levels of wellbeing. Even if emails aren't urgent or sent after work hours, they can cause more stress for the receiver than when they actually are working.
All these efforts culminated in the sixth and final study. This study confirmed that email sent after our clocks have clocked out can cause stress in our lives, making us feel like we must reply immediately.
The email also suggested that email senders can decrease stress by being clear about what they want, and when they want it, in an after-hours message.
The authors conclude that "Namely" senders can make non-urgent emails less urgent by stating in an email their expectations for a quick response.
It seems like an easy fix.
The study was published by Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
