A recent study of over 600 employees by UK employment law firm, Peninsula, showed that users with BlackBerry devices work, on average, 15 hours more per week because of the ability for them to send and receive messages while at home. When you think about it, based on a 40 hour work week, this is almost an additional 2 days of work per week.
Maybe it is just me, but, 15 hours per week seems a bit high. Outside of the office do you spend a little over 2 hours per day working from your BlackBerry?
[Source Illustration by Jonathan Keegan]
15 hours may be a bit much, but I do look at my Blackberry outside of work and look at work email that I would not normally look at until the following Monday (if it was a weekend) or the next day if I received it at night. Sometimes the email is meaningless, but if it is something that warrants a response then I will respond and work does not pay me for that time (nor do I ask to be compensated).
There is no doubt that Blackberry (or other smartphone users) put in more time. Whether it is five hours or 15 hours is up for debate.
Unfortunately I spend this and more on my blackberry dealing with work. If companies are very email centric like where I work, having the blackberry means I’m constantly tied to how my company interacts. Some companies don’t rely heavily on email and use the telephone or a face to face conversation to handle discussions and situations. Since we rely on email for almost all communications, my blackberry is a crucial extension of how I operate.
Perhaps the issue is not of blackberries but of work/life barriers in general. After all, people who take notebooks home, and have a connection to the work network from there, will put in the extra hours even absent the blackberry. If you’re compelled to process work email out of the office, you might as well do it on a blackberry during various free moments, rather than wait to get home and do it on your notebook. But if you can put up a work/life barrier and leave the email for the next morning, then you could use the blackberry for fun and leisure instead…