Leaving Your Job When You Leave the Office

Posted by Mike Smith :: October 9, 2008 @ 8:59 am

For all of the many benefits technological advancements have brought to the workplace, one huge downside comes along for the ride: leaving your job when you leave the office is becoming more and more difficult. The Networked Workers Survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 50% of employed email users say they check their work-related email on the weekends.

The cell phone that makes you available any time any place doesn’t discriminate between working and non-working hours. Occasionally, checking work email from home seems innocent enough, but it too can quickly become a regular occurrence. Seeing a daunting email late at night may give you extra time to act on the information, but it may also get you so worked up that you squander your time with family worrying about it and have trouble getting the sleep you need to prepare for the following day. When email and cell phones come together, in the case of an iPhone, Blackberry, or other smart phone, it’s nearly impossible to get away.

From a financial perspective, each minute spent working reduces the effective hourly wage of anyone on a salary. More hours worked means less earned per hour. This notion can only be taken so far, though, because if you work too few hours your effective hourly wage will be high but you may not have a job for very long. Many of the same things in life that are more important than money are also more important than your job. Again, fulfilling your job duties is your obligation to your employer and should be carried out. But in many cases, we do much more work during non-working hours than our employer expects. The world isn’t going to end if you don’t check your email tonight or if you turn off your phone as you leave work each day. You probably know some coworkers who do just that. Are they any worse off or ascending the corporate ladder more slowly than you? Probably not.

I may be overly sensitive to leaving my job at the end of the day because I do so out of necessity. As a full-time corporate telecommuter, my “office” is always just a few feet away. Strict discipline and a conscious effort to arrive and leave work at prescribed times are all that prevent me from working during most of my waking hours. In some ways, work email access and cell phones have made all of us partial telecommuters. Giving yourself a raise in your effective hourly wage is easier than you think. Simply leave your job when you leave your office.

How often do you check work email from home? Do you think your career advancement would suffer if you worked less during off-hours?