Should checking emails on the commute count as 'working hours'?

For me, I don't see a definite line between work and home and therefore for me, checking emails out of hours isn't a problem, just as sorting out work for my hobbies while I'm at work equally isn't a problem!

To Juraj's point, I would add a cautionary note that, whilst an employer may not explicitly ask or tell an employee to check their emails during their commute or outside working hours, we can wind the question back to my point about non-time-resource workers: the mutual agreement is that the workload we are given is reasonably completeable within the contractual window.  If, on the other hand, the workload is of such a volume that completing it *requires* emails and other work to be done outside normal working hours, the employer is in breach of that agreement.

Whether there is a legal case to argue for more money in such cases is questionable, but it is certainly a moral breach which is going to impact upon an employee's morale, with a knock-on impact on performance and retention.

So whilst I broadly agree that it's not compensatable time, employers - and their professional operators in this area, HR managers - should not fall into the trap of just shrugging our shoulders and saying "well, it's their choice".  Our behaviours as a company - what we measure and what we reward - will drive the behaviours of our employees, and not always to our best interests!

To Sam - on a personal level, I completely agree with you.  Waking up at 3am with a brilliant solution to an intractable contract issue (which usually turns out to be less brilliant in the cold light of day), or rehearsing my negotiation position on a difficult consultation while I shave isn't paid time, so surely my employer should allow some give and take when I take five minutes to book a ticket to a strategy gaming event at the weekend between investigation reports.

In practice, however, I find that few employers and even fewer managers are prepared to see it this way.  The best fix*, though, is to wind back to performance over time.  My boss may not be best pleased to see me browsing my karate instructors' FB group, but the odds of me being challenged are diminished if I am otherwise giving him excellent, timely work.

All the same, though, there is the well-established phenomenon of Availability Heuristics, in which we ascribe more truth or value to things we perceive often.  If a manager routinely sees you doing things in work time that aren't work, even if your work is excellent and you do additional work outside work time, there will be a tendency to see an employee as uncommitted, distracted or lazy.  This is another reason why I have encouraged my own company to adopt SMART objectives for every team and individual (not fully adopted, yet, I hasten to add) - because it's hard to make sensible judgements of performance when all you have are the biased and fallible perceptions of managers.

I've lost count of the number of dimissals I've been forced to execute because of perceptions that weren't based on firm evidence.  That's not to say that they weren't fair dismissals or even good decisions - just that, objectively, I couldn't say with confidence that the decision actually led to an improvement in overall company performance.

*I should add that the other good fix is to make sure you sit so no one can see your computer screen. ;)

To Juraj's point, I would add a cautionary note that, whilst an employer may not explicitly ask or tell an employee to check their emails during their commute or outside working hours, we can wind the question back to my point about non-time-resource workers: the mutual agreement is that the workload we are given is reasonably completeable within the contractual window.  If, on the other hand, the workload is of such a volume that completing it *requires* emails and other work to be done outside normal working hours, the employer is in breach of that agreement.

Whether there is a legal case to argue for more money in such cases is questionable, but it is certainly a moral breach which is going to impact upon an employee's morale, with a knock-on impact on performance and retention.

So whilst I broadly agree that it's not compensatable time, employers - and their professional operators in this area, HR managers - should not fall into the trap of just shrugging our shoulders and saying "well, it's their choice".  Our behaviours as a company - what we measure and what we reward - will drive the behaviours of our employees, and not always to our best interests!

To Sam - on a personal level, I completely agree with you.  Waking up at 3am with a brilliant solution to an intractable contract issue (which usually turns out to be less brilliant in the cold light of day), or rehearsing my negotiation position on a difficult consultation while I shave isn't paid time, so surely my employer should allow some give and take when I take five minutes to book a ticket to a strategy gaming event at the weekend between investigation reports.

In practice, however, I find that few employers and even fewer managers are prepared to see it this way.  The best fix*, though, is to wind back to performance over time.  My boss may not be best pleased to see me browsing my karate instructors' FB group, but the odds of me being challenged are diminished if I am otherwise giving him excellent, timely work.

All the same, though, there is the well-established phenomenon of Availability Heuristics, in which we ascribe more truth or value to things we perceive often.  If a manager routinely sees you doing things in work time that aren't work, even if your work is excellent and you do additional work outside work time, there will be a tendency to see an employee as uncommitted, distracted or lazy.  This is another reason why I have encouraged my own company to adopt SMART objectives for every team and individual (not fully adopted, yet, I hasten to add) - because it's hard to make sensible judgements of performance when all you have are the biased and fallible perceptions of managers.

I've lost count of the number of dimissals I've been forced to execute because of perceptions that weren't based on firm evidence.  That's not to say that they weren't fair dismissals or even good decisions - just that, objectively, I couldn't say with confidence that the decision actually led to an improvement in overall company performance.

*I should add that the other good fix is to make sure you sit so no one can see your computer screen. ;)

So is the debate really about whether more value is placed on input rather than output?

Sarah Churchman, Chief Inclusion and Well-being Officer at PwC shares similar thoughts here: https://www.cipd.co.uk/news-views/changing-work-views/future-work/thought-pieces/well-being-aspirations-everyday-reality 

She also talks about how the gap can be bridged between our well-being aspirations and the reality of how we actually fare at work.

For me the debate is about whether employers should be providing more guidance about emails in general and access "out of working hours" in the face of flexible working and an #AlwaysOn culture.