working 9-5? professional differences in email and boundary management practices
TRANSCRIPT
Working 9-5? !Professional Differences in Email and Boundary Management Practices
Marta E. Cecchinato, Anna L. Cox, Jon Bird
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Today, 58% of Americans own a smartphone and 89% use them to check emails. "(PEW Research, 2014)
Mobile devices allow frequent ‘micro-role transitions’ (Ashforth et al., 2000), i.e. shifts between our roles (parent, colleague, etc.).
TECHNOLOGY FACILITATES FLEXIBLE WORKING…
Interference between work and personal life is positively correlated with stress, particularly when work permeates non-work (Kossek et al., 2012).
…BUT THIS CAUSES STRESS
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WORK-LIFE BALANCE?
Boundaries between work and home can be conceptualised along an integration/segmentation continuum (Nippert-Eng, 1996).
WORK-HOME BOUNDARIES
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Email can increase boundary permeation between work and personal life (Capra et al., 2013).
EMAIL AS A BOUNDARY ARTEFACT
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1) How do people manage personal and work email accounts across devices?
2) What are the boundary management strategies adopted for personal and work email accounts across devices?"
3) Are there email and boundary management differences between two professional groups from the same organization?
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
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1) Interviews"
2) Screenshots of inbox"
3) Work-Life Indicator Scale"(Kossek et al., 2012)"
• Work Interruption Non-Work (WINW) • Non-Work Interrupting Work (NWIW) • Boundary Control (BC) • Family Identity (FI) • Work Identity (WI)
METHOD
16 university employees:"
• 9 academic staff "(e.g. post-doc, lecturer)
• 7 professional service staff (e.g. librarian, HR manager)"
o 11 females o 20-54 years old
PARTICIPANTS
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FINDINGS #1
We identify two user groups, based on:
• Work and non-work interruptions • Differences in when, where and how "
work and personal emails are managed
Academics prof. services staff & are different!
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“I would never ever check my [work] email outside of work,
purposely. It's not the kind of job that I think about when I’m not
here. I'm not allowed to work from home"
– P13, Female, PS.
a) Rigid Boundary Management
b) Permeable Boundary Management
“The first check is probably right after I woke up.
I will probably have another look during my commute.
And once I'm in my office. Once I’m home I have a second work shift after my son goes to bed until quite late in
the night” – P15, Male, A.
Individual Differences
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a) Boundary Challenges: availability
“It does irritate my partner. Like if we're in front of the TV and she's playing on a game on her phone and I check my work email then that would irritate her ‘cause [...] she sees it like me being in work rather than spending time with her.” – P5, Male, A.
FINDINGS #2
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“I check my emails on the toilet” – P5, Male, A.
@dbpharrison
b) Boundary Challenges: "cross-device interaction
“What I’ll do on my phone is […] I’ll go into my work email […] at night time and then I’ll say 'I’ll sort all those tomorrow when I go to work’ but because they're not marked as unread anymore, whenever I go to work I forget to reply.” – P8, Female, A.
MICRO-BOUNDARY PRACTICES
Through accounts: • One account per role • Dedicated folders across accounts "Through devices: • Personal email only on smartphone, "
work email only on laptop. • Deliberately removing work email from phone during time
off, e.g. on holiday"
Through software: • Different apps on smartphone for personal and work email
“a strategy to limit the impact of micro-role transitions caused by cross-domain technology mediated interruptions”
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IMPLICATIONS
1. Setting contextual notifications based on locations and account type.
2. Automatically tagging email with
device icons based on where they were first opened.
Ø No one-size-fits all solution for all the
staff in a single organisation.
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Working 9-5? !Professional Differences in Email and Boundary Management Practices
Marta E. Cecchinato Anna L. Cox Jon Bird [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
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