Personal And Work Emails Are Merging
from the which-account-for-what-now? dept
In the last year or so, I've noticed a clear trend: when it comes to work-related communications, I've been receiving many more emails at odd hours of the night or over weekends. It's become clear that people are doing work email from home -- and also personal emails from work. Basically, email has become an any time, any where tool for communications. As the article suggests, this could raise all sorts of questions about when is the best time to email people for work-related issues. Of course, some companies will probably only pay attention to the "personal emails at work" part and freak out, while ignoring the fact that their employees are actually a lot more productive by being more flexible.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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I don't see any difference between the two, I see it as having a set of responsibilities, and whatever time is convenient to get one done, that's when it's done.
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Most managers are obsessed about time and money tho. They see it this way:
(Note, actually had a VP explain it in these terms to me at my LAST company)
from 9 to 5, they are paying YOU money to work...every minute you aren't working is money YOU are ripping off the company.
After hours, they don't pay you, so any work they get you to do is a bonanza FOR the company. (notice how it doesn't go both ways?)
The above line of thinking usually is coupled with a completely incompetent view of goals and deliverables accomplished.
Where I work now, there's no 9 to 5, its flex time and working from home is possible in most circumstances (only not as a regular event..more like once in a while).
My current boss put it this way:
We pay you a salary and give you deliverables to provide. We don't run a kindergarden. You come in when you want, do your time, be here for support and meetings. Come late, leave early now and again, there's no problem as long as the job gets done.
BUT, the reverse is true. In return for not micromanaging every minute of every day, they expect us to take responsibility and to put in the extra hours when a project IS late or needs more work than usual. We don't get overtime pay.
Know what? People work the extra hours as needed and usually don't complain...and I'm betting MORE employees here go the extra mile than at my last company.
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There's also an open source project called SSL Explorer which essentially will let you VPN into your home network over https.
cheers
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si
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Email at work?
Really, you have to look at it case by case, and I can understand why a company might not want to do that, and instead, just create policies that punish employees who do personal emailing.
My own pratice, though, is to let the employee mess up and punish those who punish the rest of us by spending too much time emailing friends and family.
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But what about the opposite?
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