A recent study has revealed that 70% of remote workers were clocking time on the weekends—even if it is just as simple as checking emails—and that employees experience increased anxiety, decreased quality of sleep, and lower relationship satisfaction because of having to attend to after-hours emails. Researcher Bill Beker calls this phenomenon “anticipatory stress,” or the feeling of always being ready to receive a work email beyond work hours.
This is why, according to a recent Forbes report, company leaders should create clear communication guidelines in helping their people have truly work-free evenings, weekends, and vacations. After all, the happiest and most productive employees are not exactly the ones who work themselves into the ground.
The Forbes report acknowledged TaskUs’s work-life balance initiative as an impressive effort to curb employee burnout. Particularly, in 2019, TaskUs implemented the “No chat weekends” policy, which discourages employees from sending business-related emails or chat messages during their days off.
“At TaskUs, we value our employees’ work-life balance and want to be sure they have time to reset after the workweek. We know that allowing this time to disconnect and take a break improves long-term productivity, happiness, and energy,” said Brandy Rosner, TaskUs’s Vice President of People Operations. “We encourage leaders to take their vacation time, truly disconnect from work, not check emails or messages, and have backup contacts in place while on PTO (paid time-off).”
The Forbes report also said that other companies can learn from TaskUs: "Like TaskUs, your organization can create a healthy policy around email communications—a policy that offers to increase employee happiness and productivity by clarifying when and how communication should occur at your company."
Read more from the Forbes article: After Hours Emails Are Worse Than You Think
