Strategies for dealing with the holiday email deluge

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Hello and welcome to working on it.

I'm Bethan, deputy work and careers editor at the Financial Times, and I'll be replacing Isabelle this week.

I spent most of the last month away from the office, on a short vacation. It was great: I traveled, gathered inspiration for future projects and improved my language skills. I came back with a renewed enthusiasm for life and work.

However, the 3,000 individual emails I returned to were less motivating. It got me thinking about how technology makes taking a proper break from work more difficult. More on that below.

If you have tips or tricks on how to manage your inbox when you're back in the office — or in the daily deluge — I'd love to hear them. Email me at bethan.staton@ft.com.

Log out to log in again?

Since it's Easter weekend in the UK, many Working It readers will be preparing their out-of-office (OOO) responses this week. I think how you deal with them is revealing. Are you the type to log off completely, or continue to respond as if you never left? Or is it quietly lurking in your inbox?

I'm inclined to agree with a blanket strategy: an OOO that makes it clear that you won't see the email (or even that you'll delete it) and asks the sender to try again when you get back. This gives you a real break. It saves you from wading through thousands of emails when you return – a tedious task that also carries the risk of missing something. It manages the sender's expectations, making it clear that he or she should not wait for a response.

I'm not alone in this. In 2014, German automaker Daimler introduced a function to automatically delete emails received while employees are on vacation, with the sender notified. Arianna Huffington's company Thrive Global introduced a similar policy in 2017 in order to free employees from the anxiety of “the growing pile of emails waiting for you when you return — the stress of which offsets the benefits of disconnecting in the first place.” “.

Work life consultant Joe Robinson is also on a mission to help us stop working properly. In a small survey of 400 workers last year, it was found that only 16 percent never checked their email while on vacation, while 38 percent checked their email once a day or more. About 95 percent were supportive of the Daimler regime.

Robinson sees the need to check email while on vacation through an unusual lens—that of unsupervised impulse control. I've never heard it framed that way before, but it makes sense. “Technology can be addictive,” he told me. “The more you check email, the more you have to do it… People know they can't stop checking, but they don't know why.

In other words, logging into office correspondence by the pool may feel conscientious or hardworking. But it could be driven by basic instincts, the same subconscious twitches that make us check Instagram, for example, compulsively. Many of us are well aware of the destructive effect these habits have on our concentration. Could giving in to the urge to check email while on vacation reinforce behaviors that make it more difficult to concentrate at work?

Robinson thinks so. Signing off properly on vacation and checking in less often after hours and even throughout the workday “gives you control,” he says. “You set the terms of engagement.”

A non-scientific look at the articles about holiday working suggests there is a broader shift towards Robinson's support for a full logout.

Lucy Kellaway, a former Financial Times management columnist, was one of those who changed her mind. In 2013, she offered readers the stern advice that “you should check your messages when you're away,” and predicted that World Day — a combination of holiday and work — would become “the future for most working professionals.” However, just one year later, it upheld Daimler's strict automatic delisting, after noticing the stress reaction triggered by a holiday email notice.

Kellaway's explanations of the reasons we give ourselves for responding to holiday emails are instructive—and they range from the delusion that we're indispensable at work, to the intense fear that we're not. If you're looking at this while on vacation, I'd recommend reading it – it might even give you an excuse to log out.

Five stories from the world of work

Ending low wages: How UK businesses have responded to demands for pay rises: April marks the first quarter century of the UK minimum wage. This article carefully examines how companies achieve their success.

Morgan Stanley to stay in Canary Wharf for another 14 years: London's financial center has been hit by changes as business patterns shift post-pandemic. Here are the latest developments.

Commuting is back – but not as we knew it: Packed with data, anecdotes and some beautiful photos, this long-form article delves into how travel to work has changed since the pandemic.

Zen and the Art of Moving Out of the Zone: I loved this column about the rarely acknowledged pleasures of the Bakerloo Line and learning to see the small joys in daydreams and free time.

For young people, the job search has never been so miserable: Even if you're under 30, this column – which outlines the inhumane and desperate reality of the automated hiring system – should ring alarm bells.

another thing . . .

It's always worth keeping an eye on events run by FT Live, which bring together some of the smartest minds in the business for discussions that are often inspiring and informative.

At the end of this month, my colleague Andrew Hill is leading a free hybrid event with recruitment firm Stepstone, on attracting and retaining global talent. He will be joined by Uma Obama, journalist and founder of the Sauti Kuu Foundation, ILO macroeconomist Eckhard Ernst, and Sebastian Detmers, CEO of Stepstone Group.