Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER DECEMBER 2019 8 NEWS these four goals. ey found that people deal with email differently because they strive for different "trait-rel- evant goals." As a result, organizations and policy-makers who make broad- based recommendations about how to deal with work email "might in fact be doing workers a disservice," says the researchers in "Personality differences as predic- tors of action-goal relationships in work-email activity," published in Computers in Human Behavior. "Whilst some goals and some workers may be advantaged by adopting generalized action rec- ommendations, for others these actions may not allow them to pursue the goals that are personally valuable to them, and could poten- tially even impede such goals." Blanket ban Allison Cowan, director of human capital research at the Conference Board of Canada in Ottawa, is not surprised to hear the results of the study. "We've learned a one-size-fits- all workplace policy is not always the best way to go. A policy like an email ban outside of working hours can be very well-inten- tioned but can also be short-sight- ed," she says. "It can reduce the ability for workers to have flexible work ar- rangements, which are really up in popularity." "In some jurisdictions, employ- ers have a duty to accommodate flexible work arrangements, so employers need to be careful when implementing these broad- based policies," says Cowan. The sheer overload of office communications, such as email, has placed a lot of stress on work- ers, especially considering its dis- ruptive nature, she says. "We've heard lots of research around interruptions and focus and productivity: If someone's interrupted, say by checking their email, it can take 20 to 30 minutes for you to get your focus back on your original task. It really can have a big impact on productivity." Effective policies should not be implemented in a knee-jerk fashion, according to a health and safety expert. "Something happens and, all of a sudden, we now pass a policy and it hasn't really been thought out," says Andrew Harkness, strat- egy advisor at Workplace Safety and Preventions Services (WSPS) in Mississauga, Ont. "Employers tend to use blanket policies more often than not and it's almost the lazy way to man- age. We want to be careful about making sure that when we pass policies, that we are doing it for the right reasons and not because we're afraid to deal with an iso- lated, specific issue." But for those who prefer to do some work after hours, a flexible plan is best for those employees' mental health, says Harkness. "Maybe I'm taking care of my sick parents in an afternoon… work at home in the evening and catch up on reports and I can flex around those areas, but I have that discretion to do so and I have ac- cess to the resources I need to be able to do so, which then mini- mizes my stress issues." HR's role in email balance HR should actively participate in these conversations, according to Harkness. "ere's an opportunity to talk about things like email etiquette, and 'What are some of the prac- tices that we as an organization want to emulate?'" he says. "What we say to staff we should be reinforcing with leadership — things like making sure that we're very careful about when we are sending emails and contacting people, especially after hours. Are these emergency situations? Are we [putting] right in the subject line: 'I'm sending you this email, but please don't respond until tomorrow.'" Educating people on how to ef- fectively deal with emails should also be part of the HR toolkit, says Cowan. "ere are all sorts of strategies on how to send effective emails, how to help people organize their emails but, really, HR needs to focus on the value of discon- necting and the impact that can have on employee health and pro- ductivity," she says. "HR's role is to look to better investments and behaviours and education awareness programs related to how to manage email." Legal considerations Crafting a good after-hours policy requires some finesse, but it can and should be successfully done, according to David Brown, em- ployment and human rights law- yer at Kent Employment Law in Kelowna, B.C. "You could have something in place just as basic as 'Any overtime that's being performed outside of regular hours must receive prior approval from a supervisor or a manager.' at can provide some level of protection. It's not perfect, but it can help." e rules should be clearly de- lineated, he says. "You can have a policy in place stressing that there's no expecta- tion that people are going to be working outside of regular hours and that they're discouraged from doing so and 'Unless specif- ically asked, we won't be paying overtime.'" Besides the potential effects on health and productivity, employ- ers should keep track of a worker's after-hours work so a large bill doesn't appear out of nowhere, he says. "If somebody can actually demonstrate that they're work- ing from their home office, and they're responding to emails, and especially if they're documenting the time, they could forcibly come back and make a claim for over- time," says Brown. "If you're the employer, you can be completely blindsided by this request because you may not even be aware that this work is being done." If need be, an outright ban might work for some organizations. "You can even go beyond that, where we strictly enforce and say, 'In order to maintain work-life balance, people are not to be send- ing or receiving or even reviewing emails outside of regular hours,'" says Brown. 'Employers often tend to use blanket policies' EMAIL < pg. 1 "HR needs to focus on the value of disconnecting and the impact that can have on employee health." 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