When to Switch Off from Work
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is the "always on" culture of work emails and messaging destroying our health? Should we have a legal right to switch off, like in France?
Manuela Saragosa explores the world of office Whatsapp groups and the blurring work-life balance, with Professor Mark Cropley of Surrey University, occupational health psychologist Gail Kinman of Bedfordshire University, and Ellen Temperton of solicitors Lewis Silkin. Plus entrepreneur Mitul Thobhani explains why at his tech company Baytree Labs he doesn't impose any division between work and home life at all.
(Photo: Woman rubbing eyes in bed while using smartphone. Credit: PRImageFactory/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Once upon a time, work happened at the office and personal life started the moment you left. |
| 0:06.7 | Then came emails, smartphones and social media, and nothing has ever quite been the same since. |
| 0:12.5 | There are no boundaries at all. |
| 0:14.0 | So you could work 24 hours a day, but also evenings, weekends, on holidays. |
| 0:18.9 | So there's no boundaries whatsoever. |
| 0:21.1 | In this edition of Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuel Zaragoza, how increased |
| 0:26.3 | connectivity is making it ever harder to switch off from work. |
| 0:33.3 | Many of us have a working professional persona and then the person we are at home amongst friends and family. |
| 0:40.1 | And now the two shall meet. Except that our pervasive, always-on work culture is blurring that distinction. |
| 0:47.0 | Colleagues text and email us at all hours. Many expect a quick response to boot. The last few years have seen several European countries tackle the issue. |
| 0:55.6 | In France, employees now have the legal right to avoid work emails outside of working hours. |
| 1:01.4 | In Germany, the carmaker Volkswagen was one of the earliest adopters of a ban on out-of-work emails. |
| 1:07.6 | Is that the way forward? We'll come to that in just a moment. First, though, does it even |
| 1:11.8 | matter if we're always switched on to work? Over to Mark Cropley, Professor of Health Psychology |
| 1:17.0 | at the University of Surrey here in the UK. He's also the author of a book called The Off Switch. |
| 1:22.2 | We find that people who can't switch off, become tired, become fatigued, therefore have sleep |
| 1:27.3 | problems. There's also some research suggesting that people who can't switch off, become tired, become fatigued, therefore have sleep problems. |
| 1:28.4 | There's also some research suggesting that people who can't switch off are more likely to become more depressed, more anxious. |
| 1:35.0 | Also, things like cardiovascular disease, there's an increase of risks for people who can't switch off. |
| 1:39.9 | One reason could be the direct link from the heart and stress. |
| 1:44.6 | We know blood pressure increases when we're stressed and the heart responds in different ways. |
| 1:48.7 | But it could also be an indirect process where we've done some work showing that people who can't switch off, |
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