Checking e-mails on the commute into work ‘should count as work’, study says

Interesting news if you're someone who likes to start their working day on the commute.

Receiving work-related e-mails while you're out of the office is common practice. You have no obligation to reply to them, but you can and many people do to get a headstart on your workload. A new study, however, has shown that so many people check their e-mails on the commute into work, that it should be factored into their actual working hours. A study conducted by the University of the West of England showed that 54% of survey participants using WiFi on trains were doing so to send work e-mails. BBC reported that the study examined over 5,000 passengers as they commuted in London. Researcher Dr Juliet Jain said that the advancement of technology had caused a "blurring of boundaries", between work and home life, which now extends to the commute. "How do we count that time? Do workplace cultures need to change?" Jain asked. She discussed the difficulty of monitoring such a thing, saying: "There's a real challenge in deciding what constitutes work." On the other hand, business leaders have recognised the difficulties and warned about the possibility of damaging productivity if the line between work-life and home-life became too blurred. Jamie Kerr, of the Institute of Directors, said: "This increasing flexibility has the potential to radically shift the work-life balance for the better - but it also leaves open the door to stress and lower productivity."