Staff Well-being - Out of Hours email usage

[Arcolite]

We're looking to capture data from our Staff users to see how bad our out of hours email usage may be.

 

Currently, we're still in Hybrid Exchange mode with some users On-Prem (Exchange 2010) and others Off-Prem (Office 365).

 

What would be the best way to collating email usage times?

 

The only way I've thought of so far would be to export message tracking logs from both and working something out with those.

Any other suggestions?

[Edu-IT]

We're looking to capture data from our Staff users to see how bad our out of hours email usage may be.

 

Currently, we're still in Hybrid Exchange mode with some users On-Prem (Exchange 2010) and others Off-Prem (Office 365).

 

What would be the best way to collating email usage times?

 

The only way I've thought of so far would be to export message tracking logs from both and working something out with those.

Any other suggestions?

Doesn't help technically but I'm curious to know the reasons? Why is out of hours usage bad? Surely people are doing it of their own choice.

[elsiegee40]

I think it was @DaveP who had this at his school

[jthompson]

Could performance counters be of use here? They might be surfacable in Performance Monitor. I seem to remember looking into these when setting up some monitoring a while back. There may well be performance counters for things like OWA and ActiveSync requests which could give you an idea of the general user load on your on-premises Exchange.

[6Foot2]

I think it was @DaveP who had this at his school

Our Head was responding to concerns voiced to him by teachers.

 

The thinking goes if an E-Mail arrived the pressure was there to deal with it, no matter what time it was. Staff (ie: Teachers) need downtime away from the concerns of the day. I have my doubts because the embargo is broken quite freely by staff when they realise that there is something that they need that 'just won't wait' When this happens they are quite happy to fire off that E-Mail past the evening cut off and during the weekend too (both times when the embargo is in force)

 

One rule for one...

[forkies]

We have the following attached to the bottom of each email "School name respects the work life balance of its staff. If this email has been sent out of normal working hours, there is no expectation for you to provide an immediate response."

[mikkydoos]

^^^ Like bombarding me with mails and phone calls when I'm in the shower in the morning half an hour before I'm due in ???

[bossman]

We all have that choice to answer or ignore until we actually get into work hours don't we and so the same goes for Teaching and other Support staff.

 

Why should anyone feel pressured into answering an e-mail which encroaches on their own personal time?

 

It is entirely up to the individual but I myself don't answer any mail outside of contracted hours no matter who from work it is from!!

[Arcolite]

Doesn't help technically but I'm curious to know the reasons? Why is out of hours usage bad? Surely people are doing it of their own choice.

 

We're interested in removing the potential stress of late night emails and the pressure to answer them. Based on feedback from Staff, this happens quite frequently.

I've see instances of a few staff members sending emails out after midnight and then resuming again from 5-6am the morning. That's neither healthy for the sender(s) or the recipient(s).

I think the point that a fair few of our Staff seem to forget (despite being told by the SMT), we're a school, not a 24/7 business operation. There is no expectation for answering email outside of work hours.

 

So we're interesting in gathering information to see how prolific this type of email usage is and if there's something we need to put in place - either through re-emphasizing the School Policy, or if we have to, forcefully via the Exchange Server.

 

One thing we're debating implementing is that after say 10pm at night, any email you send to internal mailboxes gets delayed and will not be delivered until 7am the next morning.

We haven't even implemented it yet and already we're getting push back from certain SMT members who want a get-out from something that doesn't even exist yet!

 

Myself personally, I haven't got work email on my phone and I only check email when I'm sat at my desk. It's a non-issue for me.

Edited June 25, 2017 by Arcolite

[3s-gtech]

I agree with self-imposed limits - I don't sync work email to my devices and rarely check it via browser outside of work. However, if we have a CP issue it's understood that we action it immediately, in that case I would be happy to email the CP officer at any time and would hope they have the option to receive and view that email too.

[TechMonkey]

We're interested in removing the potential stress of late night emails and the pressure to answer them. Based on feedback from Staff, this happens quite frequently.

I've see instances of a few staff members sending emails out after midnight and then resuming again from 5-6am the morning. That's neither healthy for the sender(s) or the recipient(s).

I think the point that a fair few of our Staff seem to forget (despite being told by the SMT), we're a school, not a 24/7 business operation. There is no expectation for answering email outside of work hours.

 

So we're interesting in gathering information to see how prolific this type of email usage is and if there's something we need to put in place - either through re-emphasizing the School Policy, or if we have to, forcefully via the Exchange Server.

 

One thing we're debating implementing is that after say 10pm at night, any email you send to internal mailboxes gets delayed and will not be delivered until 7am the next morning.

We haven't even implemented it yet and already we're getting push back from certain SMT members who want a get-out from something that doesn't even exist yet!

 

Myself personally, I haven't got work email on my phone and I only check email when I'm sat at my desk. It's a non-issue for me.

Sorry, slightly confused by who "we" are, especially if SMT are pushing back against this. A sweeping policy change like this should not be coming from the IT department. It should be something either discussed with or generated by SMT and then push forward or championed by them. If the school leadership do not back this change then you can be assured that if even a minor incident happens due to this change it will fall squarely on your shoulders.

 

As helpful and nice as this is towards staff I would be careful how you proceed as it could generate a lot of bad will towards the IT department if played incorrectly.

[Arcolite]

Sorry, slightly confused by who "we" are, especially if SMT are pushing back against this. A sweeping policy change like this should not be coming from the IT department. It should be something either discussed with or generated by SMT and then push forward or championed by them. If the school leadership do not back this change then you can be assured that if even a minor incident happens due to this change it will fall squarely on your shoulders.

 

As helpful and nice as this is towards staff I would be careful how you proceed as it could generate a lot of bad will towards the IT department if played incorrectly.

 

Our SMT are behind the request. We have six members of our SMT, each having a different role. Our SMT member who is responsible for Staff is the driver behind this. Out of the remaining five, three are also backing them, one is wavering and one is completely against it.

There's always one...

Edited June 26, 2017 by Arcolite

[PotNoodleTech]

Just because you provide the opportunity for staff to access these systems at home, does not mean you are forcing them to work outside of hours. It is up to each individual member of staff to decide if they want to send or even read an email out of hours, it is absolutely nothing to do with IT Support, it is a matter of balance versus professionalism and work/live balance for each individual concerned.

 

If you forcibly remove access out of hours for staff, this could actually increase stress as members of staff who may have needed to access the system out of hours to do something they feel is important, will not be able to, and then will have to rush it in the evening or early morning within school. It won't help staff members who do not work at home anyway as they were not going to use the systems anyway, so all your really doing is punishing the people who feel they need to spend the extra time out of hours and it may suit them better to do this at home rather than in school (child care, looking after elderly relatives, etc).

 

Our school is open 7am - 7pm but that does not mean there is an expectation for staff to be in and working at 7am and stay till 7pm every day. The opportunity is there for them to access the school early or late if they so wish to according to what suits them and their work/life balance best. Each staff member makes that decision. It's not a school policy. It is exactly the same for IT system access out of hours, there is not an expectation, just an opportunity. Your SLT need to be clear and deceive on this as the wrong decision here could be a big negative step for your school and your staff. External access is only going to get more and more used what with the move to cloud, google classroom, etc, etc, you could end up banning access after 6pm to all of these systems, and what about the pupils are you going to ban access for them after 4pm too?

[PotNoodleTech]

Oh and one thing you can do to help is to have a policy / best practice that staff must have notifications turned off specifically on their school email accounts on their devices so that if someone does send an email at midnight it doesn't ping and ding for all the other staff.

[Arcolite]

Just because you provide the opportunity for staff to access these systems at home, does not mean you are forcing them to work outside of hours. It is up to each individual member of staff to decide if they want to send or even read an email out of hours, it is absolutely nothing to do with IT Support, it is a matter of balance versus professionalism and work/live balance for each individual concerned.

 

If you forcibly remove access out of hours for staff, this could actually increase stress as members of staff who may have needed to access the system out of hours to do something they feel is important, will not be able to, and then will have to rush it in the evening or early morning within school. It won't help staff members who do not work at home anyway as they were not going to use the systems anyway, so all your really doing is punishing the people who feel they need to spend the extra time out of hours and it may suit them better to do this at home rather than in school (child care, looking after elderly relatives, etc).

 

Our school is open 7am - 7pm but that does not mean there is an expectation for staff to be in and working at 7am and stay till 7pm every day. The opportunity is there for them to access the school early or late if they so wish to according to what suits them and their work/life balance best. Each staff member makes that decision. It's not a school policy. It is exactly the same for IT system access out of hours, there is not an expectation, just an opportunity. Your SLT need to be clear and deceive on this as the wrong decision here could be a big negative step for your school and your staff. External access is only going to get more and more used what with the move to cloud, google classroom, etc, etc, you could end up banning access after 6pm to all of these systems, and what about the pupils are you going to ban access for them after 4pm too?

 

We're not looking to ban access at all. At worst, we're looking to delay the delivery of emails sent out of hours so that staff don't get stressed by a ping on the phone from late night email just before they go to bed.

At the moment (the the purpose of the thread) we're only looking to gather information on how prolific out of hour use is. We may find it's a non-issue.

 

As a department, ICT Support have got Office 365 and WIndows 10 rollout this summer - we've got better things to do.

This is by request of our SMT (most of them anyway...) following feedback from the Common Room committee.

 

While I agree it's up to the individual, some people can't help themselves. I could name half a dozen of our facility who are working unhealthy hours and have/will crash if they aren't careful.

 

Without naming the school - we're a very high pressure environment (top performing oxbridge independent school, not that it isn't high pressure elsewhere!). Our staff are under a lot of pressure and as a school our SMT feel a responsibility to the well being of Staff and wants to ensure they're doing as much as they can to support that. The end result may just be stronger communication of expectations out of hours - however, they want to gather infomation before putting effort into fixing a problem that might not exist.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Arcolite

[Oaktech]

We are moving away from providing staff laptops, and partly due to this we provide systems which enable staff to work whenever they see fit. RDS is available 24/7 (except for a 3am Friday morning maintenance window) Email is Office365 and most staff have it on their phones. I provide documentation for setting it up on phones which includes scheduling quiet times on android. Cloud printing is available to our Uniflow installation and the staff timeout is 72 hours so a document printed on Friday night is still available on Monday morning. I try and make myself as responsive as possible to any issues with remote log ons. The idea is for the staff to regulate their own working patterns.

 

It is written into our AUP that whilst staff may choose to send emails at whatever time they like they must not expect a reply or even for the email to be read outside of their directed or contracted times. Teachers directed times are 7:30am until 4:00pm and most other contracted times are 8:00am - 3:30pm (TAs) or 4:00pm (office staff). I'm a bit different, because I'm the only person who works a set number of hours a week which means if I spend 10 minutes resetting a log in on a Sunday afternoon I reduce my time the following week to account for it.

 

To go to the original question, I've just used the message tracking logs to see who sends what outside office hours, and then if you did want to set rules I believe you could do it with transport rules and PS although it may be awkward whilst still in hybrid.

 

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/exchange/en-US/4c8bfedb-952e-4580-a40e-6d371dd6013f/outlookexchange2007-mailbox-rule-run-during-time-frame

[psydii]

That used to be a problem here.

 

But now, as a manger you are expected to have your game sufficiently together that you do not need to send late night emails.

 

If you are asking someone to do something tomorrow, late in the evening, it is an indication of your failure and you will be held to account.

 

Sending such emails rapidly becomes a "cause for concern" item in one own's Line Management meetings.

 

SLT really play on the "Leadership" point here, and behave as they expect others to behave.

 

Additionally emailing in general is frowned upon as a primary means of cascading management requirements and should only be used to reinforce previous face to face communication. Each department is also expected to produce its own weekly bulletin email to share information rather than firing off tens/hundreds of emails a week. If a matter required cross-departmental engagement then it goes into the weekly whole school bulletin, managed by the SLT Admin. Reading this bulletins is mandatory.

 

Exceptions are allowed, on your own professional judgement. If we used technology to block unwanted behaviours, we would also block the edge cases where it is appropriate useful and even necessary to send a message that late for example, during a crisis.

[IGB]

My partner is a Head of Faculty with 2 children (12 & 8).

Her work/life balance means that she doesn't do any school work until the children are in bed, probably close to around 10pm. This is her choice. She gets to spend quality time with her children, then decides once they no longer need her un-divided attention she can then do work.

If I was to block/ban/restrict her access to any of the services that the school provides, that would mean that she would need to work earlier in the evening preventing the quality time she has with her children.

 

I think this would add pressure and stress to an already stressful workload that teachers have to deal with. The rush to have to complete any work that they want to before a cut off time, would only serve to make their home life worse if you ask me.

[titch]

Sorry for resurrecting but going through the same thing here and wondering if there is a very basic way of seeing how many emails are roughly sent out of hours. Use office outlook online and wondering if there was a way of reporting on this through reports or power bi. Dont want to spend too long setting up rules though. Just some basic stats to back up a conversation.

[AlanD]

I think users need to learn their own discipline when it comes to messaging...especially ouylt of hours. Some like to get an early heads up about an issue when others prefer to not see stuff until the next day. Having worked as a teacher in a boarding school.. It is kind of expected or assumed you are always on duty.. And in return you get longer holidays... But I know this can be difficult when youhl have families and other non school activities and commitments.

[msi_school]

I am on the fence about this, staff are supposed to be professionals and able to schedule themselves, however this can cause excessive stress and because a pressure point in the relationship between staff and leadership.

 

But no one has answered the question is there an easy way to record late night email traffic?

 

Mike

[titch]

I agree with both of you above. This is why I want some hard facts so I can discuss with SMT with some actual facts. Cheers

[PotNoodleTech]

Well most of what we all posted are just opinions as it is up to each SLT how they treat their own staff.

 

What I will say is, it is generally understood in the business world that flexible working arrangements make your employees happier and more productive. That's why more and more companies are going down the road of flexible part time, flexible hours, working from home days, duvet days, all sorts of flexibly style arrangements in order to leverage productivity.

 

If you guys ban or control or curtail these kind of flexible practices then you could argue it is a fact that you are doing the wrong thing, and going the wrong way. But that's just my opinion

[jthompson]

I am on the fence about this, staff are supposed to be professionals and able to schedule themselves, however this can cause excessive stress and because a pressure point in the relationship between staff and leadership.

 

But no one has answered the question is there an easy way to record late night email traffic?

 

Mike

 

If you could, you'd still have a bit of a task deducing anything about working practices out of that. Your organisation may be receiving plenty of out of hours emails, but this could be promotional stuff, parents emailing in, automated alerts, etc. If you just look at the number of emails being sent, that's not going to be too reliable a measure either, as some people may be using out of hours time just to read through and process stuff that's already been in their inbox for several hours/days, rather than sending much. I think you'd struggle to get reporting of user activity (number of active logins, messages being marked read, being deleted, etc. during each hour of the day) that means much, especially if lots of staff have mobile mail clients attached to their accounts and/or leave themselves logged into webmail day-to-day.

[Achandler]

The issue is surely all to do with when the emails are expected to be actioned, not when they are being sent.

 

Staff should have schedules on their devices so they aren't checking emails out of work hours by default, so they are actively having to do it to even notice. Loads of Email Apps allow this now, with different schedules for different accounts.

 

Once people aren't checking the emails until they are back in work hours then no one will expect things to have been looked at before work hours, so that will die off as well. It being very much a squishy issue so to speak.

 

If there really is an urgent reason to contact someone then a phone call should be used not an email or text. If you don't want to disturb them with a phone call, it isn't urgent.