Right to disconnect

When my working day is over, I close my laptop and hide it away under my sofa so that I won’t catch even a glimpse of it until the start of the next working day. But sometimes I don’t shut it down correctly, and I’ll hear an email ping into my inbox late in the evening. This instantly raises my stress levels, as I mull over what it could be, and dread what awaits me the next morning. This isn’t a logical response – most of the emails I get are nice, or they’re spam.

I’m at least fortunate in that no-one expects me to reply to emails on evenings or weekends (or at least, no-one has complained to me about not doing so). But not everyone is as lucky. In a recent survey of employees at Australian universities, 21% of respondents said that their supervisors expect them to respond to calls and messages outside of working hours. Further results of the survey reveal that those respondents are more likely to be exhausted, distressed or ill than employees whose free time remains their own.