France introduces 'No work email after hours' rule

[Dos_Box]

Well done France: BBC News - Could work emails be banned after 6pm?

 

France has brought in rules to protect employees from work email disturbing them outside office hours. Would a law to this effect be feasible elsewhere?You're reclining on the beach admiring the surf when your phone goes beep. You've got mail. From your boss.

In many jobs, work email doesn't stop when the employee leaves the office. And now France has decided to act. It has introduced rules to protect about a million people working in the digital and consultancy sectors from work email outside office hours. Those are taken to be before 9am and after 6pm. The deal signed between employers federations and unions says that employees will have to switch off work phones and avoid looking at work email, while firms cannot pressure staff to check messages.

 

 

I wonder if this could work elsewhere for any work related communications (unless very urgent) such as mobiles?

[spadam]

Can't see how they could bring this in without also including a clause for staff who are on call etc.. - Then it is likely that companies who expect their staff to respond to work email out of hours would use this clause to get around it making it rather pointless

[localzuk]

The media seems to be pushing the wrong end of the stick with this. The law applies to "Cadres" aka "Managerial Staff" or "Professional" (Its about independence of working - they don't all just do what they're told, they do their job without constant input). It doesn't apply to, say, admin staff. It probably would apply to network managers or school heads and the like. It also simply defines that those people cannot be disturbed for 11 hours a day.

[6Foot2]

I am contacted at all hours [and weekends] by our staff sometimes about the most trivial matters. I am usually able to help with a simple reply or by remoting into the school network and restarting a service or a server etc.

 

I can't see SLT waiting for the next working day when a member of staff has a question waiting to be asked...

[featured_spectre]

I am contacted at all hours [and weekends] by our staff sometimes about the most trivial matters. I am usually able to help with a simple reply or by remoting into the school network and restarting a service or a server etc.

 

I can't see SLT waiting for the next working day when a member of staff has a question waiting to be asked...

 

Ask for an amendment to your contract, say that you will start billing for the out of hours work at full double time pay. They soon change their attitudes then! [/sarcasm]

[HarryMonkey]

I am contacted at all hours [and weekends] by our staff sometimes about the most trivial matters. I am usually able to help with a simple reply or by remoting into the school network and restarting a service or a server etc.

 

I can't see SLT waiting for the next working day when a member of staff has a question waiting to be asked...

 

I'm not paid for anything out of hours so any emails are generally ignored and no-one has my mobile number. My time outside of work is just that - mine.

[theriver]

Is the underlying issue that people are using personal devices for work (or work devices for personal things)?

 

Playing devils advocate - if it's a work phone, turn it off at 5.30.

 

On a similar note, VW did this a while ago, it would be interesting to follow up and find out if it had a positive impact:

 

BBC News - Volkswagen turns off Blackberry email after work hours

[Stark]

Interesting read I felt,

 

I turned off my work emails on the phone a good while back, same in every job I think, some people live to work, some work to live, some people do work out of hours here, myself if its an emergency or an urgent job it will get dealt with, anything else can be dealt with in a working day, the worst thing for me though I was finding is that I felt compelled to reply on receiving anything that came under me if I received it, now I have the dreaded work/life balance sorted better and think I am better off for it.

 

I cant see this being workable though the article or being put into practice though in UK, more of a talking point I think.

[witch]

I check my work emails just so I don't walk back into a situation that I didn't know about.

A couple of days ago I got an email from a fairly new teacher about an issue with his laptop. He wasn't rude or anything but there was NO acknowledgement that I don't work holidays and he was disturbing me.

I did make some suggestions (yeah, yeah, I know) and he has just emailed to say that my suggestions didn't work and that this was using too much of his time trying to solve it - he was sure that it was a hardware issue and would leave it till next term.

Again, no mention of the fact that I am trying to help him in MY OWN time.

(his laptop screen is blank but does send an output to a projector -possilbly a motherboard issue)

 

I quite often get emails to my work address - it seems obvious to me that they have no idea that I do not use this email for personal stuff - I think many of them do - and they do expect an answer.

[Marshall_IT]

I normal answer emails out of hours. I also do some work unpaid out of hours work but, I guess I'm slightly sad, as it's normally only stuff I enjoy.

 

For example: setting up the layer 7 filtering for our 1to1 iPads to block Facebook, WhatsApp, snapchat etc.

Writing scripts to program the new VLANs on my switches.

Writing Powershell scripts to automate office 365.

I love new things and love to 'play' with them. The new GPOs I imported for Windows 8 and server 2012.

Playing with MIT App inventor...

 

Like I said.. I guess I'm just sad.

[6Foot2]

On this topic: I have just received an E-Mail from one of our teachers. In the E-Mail there it is stated that they cannot access ePortal and it is reporting time [and as a result it has to be fixed] I am working on it now but this is an occasion that demonstrates the point I made earlier in this thread: That if there is a problem The Head will want it fixed.

 

I can't see a new agreement being drawn up. Perhaps if the French rule were to come to The UK things might change.

[SpuffMonkey]

On this topic: I have just received an E-Mail from one of our teachers. In the E-Mail there it is stated that they cannot access ePortal and it is reporting time [and as a result it has to be fixed] I am working on it now but this is an occasion that demonstrates the point I made earlier in this thread: That if there is a problem The Head will want it fixed.

 

I can't see a new agreement being drawn up. Perhaps if the French rule were to come to The UK things might change.

 

Yes - but if you're not being paid to provide out of hours cover and you're not getting any other benefits from doing the work - you're being taken for a mug