PORSCHE TOLD TO HIT THE BRAKES ON OUT-OF-HOURS EMAILS

Porsche could ban out-of-hour emails – but what other companies already have these policies in place?

German carmaker Porsche may soon follow in the footsteps of rivals Daimler and Volkswagen by banning out-of-hours emails for its employees.

Uwe Hück, head of Porsche’s works council and deputy chairman of Porsche’s supervisory board, said the firm’s employees should be protected from work-related emails in their free time, and any correspondence between 7pm and 6am should be “returned to sender”.

He told German news agency DPA: “To read and reply to emails from the boss during the evenings is unpaid working time which increases stress — that’s just not acceptable”, the FT reported.

Employees have been bombarded with out-of-hours emails ever since the introduction of the BlackBerry in the late Nineties and early Noughties, giving users access to their emails remotely.

The overuse of digital devices has been blamed for people becoming over-worked, stressed and sleep deprived.

Late last year, the French government pledged to tackle the problem formally, by introducing a new law which obliges employers to guarantee their employees the “right to disconnect” out of hours. On January 1 2017, the employment law came into force, forcing organisations with more than 50 workers to start negotiations to define the rights of employees who want to ignore their phones.

Some large firms, such as Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler in Germany, and Areva and Axa in France, have taken matters into their own hands and introduced steps to limit out-of-hours messaging to reduce burnout among workers – although some more reluctantly than others.