Re-Think Our After-Hours Email Policy

TO:  Yuval Ganot - CEO, Amit Giorini - VP Sales, Meirav Horovitz - CFO, Nimrod Wiznitzer - VP Marketing, Anastasia Veselov - VP Business Development 

FROM: Amit Deri, HR Director

DATE: Oct 18, 2015

SUBJECT: Re-think our after-hours email policy

The last few year’s advancements in mobile technology have lead to an increase in our employees’ ability to stay connected to work around the clock. From the establishment of our company five years ago, in a competitive and demanding market, the need for our employees to work many hours a day was critical. These days, however, when our company’s revenues have excitedly increased by over 30% compared to last year - it is time for us to re-think our after-hours email policy so we can both better retain our employees and also keep increasing our revenues.  Recent studies have shown that less emails mean better productivity and empowered employees. Conducting an after-hours policy that restricts sending email within the company’s network outside of work hours will positively effect both our employee’s personal lives as well as our company’s productivity.

Employees and life-work balance

Our human capital is our most important asset. We expect them to be productive, energized, creative and supportive to their colleagues but we somehow forget the importance of balancing our demands with our employee’s personal time.  Many leading worldwide manufacturing companies like us have recently decided to turn off their email after work-hours, to enable better life-work balance for their employees. So, why is that balance so important? Here are some reasons identified in recent studies:

• With no time to relax and recharge, the ability to do a job decreases and the performance level suffers.
• Overworked employees are more likely to suffer health problems and be absent and/or sick.
• Employees are more likely to take a job that offers less money if their work-life balance is increased.

Allowing our employees more personal time will benefit us due to happier, relaxed and more satisfied employees who will more likely want to stay in our company, leading to another important aspect of our work - productivity.

Company’s productivity

A natural result of more productive work is more profitable work. One of the best ways to increase productivity is to have proper work-life balance. How can such balance impact productivity according to recent studies?

1. Employees want to be seen as always available, and do so by emailing around the clock, causing depression and stress, making workers less efficient.
2. The use of constant email around the clock with questions CC’d to many team members stems from a lack of confidence to make decisions by their own.
3. Employers that offer work-life balance are likely to have the competitive edge and gain access to a wider recruitment pool.

Therefore, restricting the use of emails will result in employees that are more empowered and capable of making decisions by themselves. This will also force them to use face to face and phone calls to solve problems in less time. As a result, each email will be more valuable, efficient and focused, creating employees who are more beneficial and mindful, less busy and distracted.  Think of our sales-people, our software engineers and our marketing team. The more productive they are, the more profitable the company is.