According to recent research, nearly three-quarters of workers in London are happy to contact work while they are on holiday. The thinking is that, in these financially austere times, employees simply have to make themselves available all of the time in order to keep their jobs.
The concept of checking work email from the beach doesn't trouble me unduly. I know a lot of people make quite a big deal out of shutting down all work activity for the duration of their holiday, but in these connected times, that probably involves more effort than occasionally looking at your inbox. I actually think that wanting to keep abreast of developments while you're away is a good thing - you spend more time at work than you do with your friends or family, and the projects you're involved in play a major part in your life. It stands to reason, then, that you might want to see what's happening when you're out of the office.
A lot of the problem here is that it often isn't the people who want to stay connected constantly who end up doing it. People who boast high job satisfaction usually have a pleasant work-life balance, meaning that, although they'd be happy to think about work on their days off, they probably don't need to. Stressed, overworked and undervalued people, however, would no doubt kill for the chance to switch the Blackberry off for a fortnight, but work pressures mean that probably isn't possible.
But the trend certainly seems to be that more and more people find themselves giving up valuable holiday time in order to keep tabs on events at work. And while I can see that worries about losing your job are pressuring many people into out-of-office work that they'd rather avoid, the simple fact of the matter is that technology has made it staggeringly simple for just about everyone to stay in the loop. Decades ago, working from home or contacting work from the other side of the world was the sole preserve of the high-flying executive - overworked and stressed, yes, but paid handsomely for it. Nowadays, it's unusual for anybody to go for a whole weekend without having a sneaky peek at their work email at some point.
No matter how easy it is, though, everybody has the right to switch off from work and relax when they take a holiday. It's one thing to know that someone from work might phone you at some point with an urgent query that only you can answer, but it doesn't seem right to me to spend what little holiday you have hunched over a laptop. Swapping your office chair for a beach towel isn't really going to relax you terribly if you're doing exactly the same thing.
Me? I am perfectly happy to check my email when I'm away from the office, largely because I'm very nosey and don't like the idea of missing out on office gossip. Unless someone asks something particularly urgent, then I feel that my out of office auto-responder does the job quite nicely of letting people know when I'll get back to them.
What do you think, though? Do you enjoy the luxury of being able to switch off when you leave the office, or do you feel pressured into staying connected the whole time? Or do you just love your job so much that you don't want to stop thinking about it for a moment? Let me know in the comments.
