So, while the trajectory of this post may take me perilously close to getting dooced, I would like to open up the comments to the subject of personal email and the workplace: does a worker who has zero access to personal email represent a more efficient worker then the counterpart who has full access and uses it responsibly?<\/p>\n
Back when I had full email access, I checked it about a 6 or 7 times a day, spending on average about 7 to 8 minutes or more each time. This represents about a solid hour or more or time spent not working, but fucking off in email. For the purposes of this post, I will refer to this as the Email Hour. (I wont take too deep a cut into my critique of the workplace smokers, who as you may know, also take about a half-dozen 10 minute breaks during the course of their day, which I will not refer to as the Sarcoma Hour.)<\/p>\n
Either way, the personal email or the smoker can be seen to \u2018take\u2019 up to 10% of their employers time as their own.<\/p>\n
On some of the busiest days, I wouldn\u2019t check it at all for fear of losing either my train of thought or having to read a personal email for which a response was required (plausible email deniability). Similarly, even on the most famine of days, I would still only spend my typical email hour reading and responding to personal emails. This is an example of the respect I had for the productivity that was expected of me.<\/p>\n
My defense of the privilege of being able to access personal email in the workplace is simply to yield a more satisfied worker, connected to his or her outside life via these innocuous breaks throughout the day. Given my flexible schedule, even on the most compressed of workdays, I feel I still put in 8 hours of work in addition to my email hour.<\/p>\n
In return for this persistence of connectivity to my personal life, the company received more focused, more satisfactory work from me as an employee. I know it sounds vague, but I liken it to working without windows to the outside world. A worker who has a window onto the outside world, due to the stimulation received from their view, represents a more efficient worker than the guy stuck in a vanilla cube.<\/p>\n
In addition to personal email of a recreational nature, I also relied on the same email access to stay on top of my design business, edgehill productions. I receive on average 3-4 design-related emails a week from my clients, which I am able to answer fairly quickly during the workday as I have access to tools, internet\/information and a heightened state of awareness.<\/p>\n
With the new restrictions put in place by my company, I must resort to fielding all of these emails \u2013 both recreational as well as personal business related \u2013 during my time at home, either at night or in the mornings. I must also attempt in the evenings to field any & all of the emails (requests, inquiries, etc) I get on the email forum I monitor.<\/p>\n
And here is where the fulcrum upon which my displeasure rests.<\/p>\n
On weekdays, I have \u2013 at most \u2013 2 hours in the evening and 2 hours in the morning with my son. After he goes to sleep at night marks the onset of the \u2013 again, at most \u2013 2 hours in the evening I have to spend with my wife. In order to stay abreast of all the emails I have to read – let alone those to which a response is needed \u2013 requires that I take that same workplace hour and apply it to my homelife. Rather then spreading the time out across a few multi-minute segments throughout the course of the day, it all comes in a lump-sum at night.<\/p>\n
To be fair, there is a portion of my conscience that clearly states that by definition, personal email ought to be dealt with on personal time. But I must temper that with how I still worked a full day\/week, and how strongly I feel about how a more satisfied worker is a more productive worker. I fully understand and respect the reasoning behind the companies decision to implement these security measures. I accepts that the measures were put in place less to regain any perceived loss of productivity but more so to prevent the introduction of costly and destructive email-bourne virus and Trojans.<\/p>\n
How much time do YOU spend on personal email during the course of your workday?
\nDo you have an example of where a worker clearly abused either the Email Hour or the Sarcoma Hour?
\nWould you accept a 10% reduction in salary to compensate for an Email Hour each day?<\/p>\n
Discuss\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, while the trajectory of this post may take me perilously close to getting dooced, I would like to open up the comments to the subject of personal email and the workplace: does a worker who has zero access to personal email represent a more efficient worker then the counterpart who has full access and … Continue reading SPEW :: the email hour<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[60,68,173,203],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.archibaldjude.com\/spew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.archibaldjude.com\/spew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.archibaldjude.com\/spew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.archibaldjude.com\/spew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.archibaldjude.com\/spew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.archibaldjude.com\/spew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.archibaldjude.com\/spew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.archibaldjude.com\/spew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.archibaldjude.com\/spew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}