14 DAY TRIAL // Maybe the idea the French have to ban companies from contacting employees after office hours isn’t such a bad one after all. According to a study from GFI Software, there’s really no escape from company email during our free hours.
According to the study about the email user habits, 41 percent of people admitted to checking work email at least once a day during their personal time, while 38 percent admitted to checking the account multiple times a day, including during pre-work mornings, evenings, weekends and days off.
The study goes on to build on a similar one conducted last year, but this time chooses to also look at the impact of mobility and the bring-your-own-device trend on email consumption. The results indicate that 18 percent of those surveyed use a smartphone or tablet as their primary device for sending and receiving email, which means that they can be connected to it 24/7 unless the device is turned off or the Internet connection stopped.
During working hours, 26.6 percent of people admit to responding to email within 15 minutes of receiving it, while a further 26.1 percent take between half an hour and an hour to respond.
When it comes to waiting for a reply, most expect to hear something within a day, while a similar number of people expect a message within a few hours.
Just a third of the people questioned, namely 31.4 percent, manage to resist the temptation of checking their work email during their private time.
Not only does checking the work email account affect people’s free time, but it also affects social events and other important events from our lives. The study revealed that almost 60 percent of people check their work emails while on holiday, while a further 6.4 percent admitted to checking the same email during a wedding ceremony. Another 4.1 percent said they’ve gone through work mail during their kids’ school events.
“Email is not just a critical business communications tool, but as the data shows it is relied on – perhaps too much – as a virtual filing cabinet and storage repository. This kind of approach can all too easily breed an ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind’ attitude towards email safety, security and backup, which is dangerous ground for any company to be on given the value of the data tied up in an organization’s mailboxes and the disruption that is caused when just one user suffers email disruption, let alone the whole company,” said Sergio Galindo, general manager of the Infrastructure Business Unit at GFI Software.
The independent study was conducted at the demand of GFI Software by Opinion Matters and involves 500 UK employees from companies with up to 500 workers.