Work e-mail affecting personal lives of employees

Email user habits reveals that work email is encroaching into the personal lives and free time of employees more than ever.

Nearly 58 per cent admit to checking work email at least once a day in their personal time, while 39 per cent admit checking multiple times a day or in real-time through pre-work mornings, evenings, weekends and days off.

Further more, 39 per cent regularly check their work email after 11 pm.

While most of those replying to email are motivated to do so quickly, those receiving email do not expect such a fast response.

Only 11 per cent of those surveyed expect a reply inside 15 minutes, while only 53 percent expect a reply in one hour or less, far lower than those actually responding in that time.

• "As we see an increased proliferation of devices into our daily lives, maintaining a balance will continue to be an uphill task," says Vinod Kumar, managing director at Satcom Infotech.
• Monitoring of work email outside of work hours is inescapable, with 74 per cent of those surveyed regularly checking their work email at weekends
• A further 54 per cent admit to checking work email while on vacation
  One quarter (25 per cent) feel compelled to reply to work emails within 15 minutes of receipt of an email
• In total, 67 per cent of respondents reply to work emails in under one hour, while over six percent take more than a week to reply
• Down five per cent from 2014, the survey found that 25 per cent of workers surveyed use their work email account for personal activities. The drop suggests increased concern over company monitoring of workplace email and Internet use
• Over 36 per cent of work email users surveyed do nothing to organise their email, including archiving, leaving all incoming mail in their Inbox
• About 13 per cent have had arguments at home due to them checking work email during family time.

This reveals a substantial level of work leaking into personal and family occasions. For example:

• Nearly eight per cent have gone through work email while attending an event at their child's school
• More than six per cent have checked email during a wedding
• Four per cent have actively checked email while either they or their partner was in labour
• Three per cent have checked email during a funeral
• The survey was conducted by by GFI Software, a provider of messaging and security software,  which studied the employees email interaction behaviour as well as the hindrances faced in the effective work email use.