Influx of work-related e-mails trigger stress, anxiety

SYDNEY - Beware of an influx of work-related e-mails that invade your private life, causing stress, anxiety as well as potential damage to family relationships.

Melissa Gregg of the department of gender and cultural studies, University of Sydney, who conducted a study, says until now many people considered social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to be part of people’s leisure practices.

“But for workers in a range of office jobs, it’s become part of the job. And largely, this has happened without any discussion at the workplace about implications for workload,” Gregg says.

The study was part of an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship Project in which in-depth interviews were conducted with information workers from large organisations over three years.

The research project coincided with the rise of online culture over the past three years: specifically social networking sites.

Gregg found that many of the interviewees believed checking and sending e-mails from home did not constitute “work”. They would check email at night in bed and as early as 6 am before children woke, so that they could focus on “real work” in office hours.

The study also found that children using computers and other technology at home were affected by the workload of their parents who seemed too distracted or exhausted with work to interact with them.

Part-time workers were found to keep email accounts open on official non-work days to “keep things moving” and avoid “holding up” full-time workers.

“This hidden labour in the home also translates to a significant amount of unpaid work performed by women. It’s another factor in the ongoing gender pay gap,” Gregg said, according to an University of Sydney release.

“We found some surprising stories from people who said they were concerned that their children were addicted to the internet, but who were actually showing signs of addiction themselves. But these people didn’t see their use of computers as a problem because it was to do with work,” Gregg says.