I was having lunch with a friend recently who said “I don’t feel guilty updating my Facebook page with personal information during the day as I look at that as an integration of my work and life. When I get home and I’m on Facebook, I may be responding to work inquiries such as reviewing the requests of members to join our Association Facebook page. I don’t necessarily stop work at 5:00 p.m. and start life”.
I admire this philosophy and I think it’s a healthy one. So often, we’ve been taught to “balance” our work and life by making sure they have distinct parameters. But if you’re a mom with a sick child and a partner in a busy law firm, you know those parameters are not always easy to define. And isn’t that the beauty of technology – I don’t have to be sitting in my office in order to communicate with clients and others? I can be at home while my sick child is napping and I’m working on my laptop writing a brief.
The smart phone is certainly an incentive to meld our work and life. I can easily check work email at 10:00 p.m. while I’m checking my weather app to decide what to wear to work the next day. Perhaps I spend 15 minutes reading and replying, or maybe 15 seconds checking to see how many new emails are in the box, the point is that I’m engaged in work and thinking about what I do there beyond the hours of 8:30 and 5:00.
However, as an employer, this same technology has brought to light an issue around whether or not a business is required to pay overtime to nonexempt employees for time spent checking work email or other work-related matters using devices such as smart phones, PDAs or laptops after normal working hours. A suit has been filed in the Eastern District of Wisconsin against a commercial real estate firm alleging they required employees to carry BlackBerrys to keep in touch after hours. A 2008 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project focused on Internet use. The findings show that 50 percent of e-mail users said they check work-related e-mail on weekends and 22 percent check e-mail “often” during the weekend.
To avoid problems with overtime issues, just one of several unintended consequences of employees working 24/7, you may want to write some guidelines for your office about what is expected on the part of the employer and the employee as relates to technology and its uses outside the office. Check out our sample Social Media / Technology policies on our website www.lawyersmutualnc.com for some suggestions.
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