In a report by BBC News, Volkswagen notes that all Blackberry work email will be turned off outside office hours. This move has been executed by Volkswagen Germany earlier this year, following complaints about the division between work life and private life fading.

Quoting the report:

Under the arrangement servers stop routing emails 30 minutes after the end of employees’ shifts, and then start again 30 minutes before they return to work.

The staff can still use their devices to make calls and the rule does not apply to senior management.

“We wanted to take a preventative approach to tackling the issue,” said Gunnar Killian, VW’s works council spokesman.

I’m actually interested why the rule would not apply to senior management of VW: do they receive so little work email it’s not a problem as such? Are they not a member of the trade union? Or are they ‘always on’ anyway and have no separation between work life and private life?

The report goes on telling about the Atos campaign completely banning internal email: a more rigorous move towards taming the flood of electronic messages.

Is your company actively managing the email load for you to give you ample time to enjoy your private life? If you don’t have a Blackberry or other company smartphone, are you obliged by job function / task description to handle email outside office hours? Let us know in the comments.

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