AIBU to think this is a normal and acceptable email policy?

[SamSamT]

Hi all,

I was conducting induction for some new starters at work this week; and yesterday we went over some minor policies. One of them being our email policy.

Just for context; we are a medium sized business. Standard office environment with your standard business hours. Since the pandemic we only need to be in the office 2 days a week; but are expected to be available/contactable Mon-Fri during business hours.

Our email policy is basically:

• You can send emails whenever you want. You’re encouraged to use schedule send it outside of business hours but not a problem if you don’t.
• The quickest you can expect someone to read an email you send is by the end of the day. On the flip side you are expected to at least read anything in your inbox before you finish for the day.
• If you need to let someone know something before the end of the day, you need to ring or go see them.
• The quickest you can expect someone to reply to an email is 24hrs (not including weekends). On the flip side, you should always try to reply to emails within 24 hours even if it’s a quick “Got your email, I’ll get the info to you by xxx”
• If you need a reply off someone in less than 24hrs you need to ring them or go see them.
• There is no expectation to read emails out of office hours. Emails sent out for office hours will be considered to have been sent at 8am the following business day for the purposes of read and reply times.

We formalised the policy about 4/5 years ago, as we found expectations varied between managers.

Several of the new starters felt it was a bit invasive they could be receiving emails outside of business hours even if they didn’t have to read them until the end of the next business day. A few of the new starters also thought the expectation to have read all your emails before you sign off was a asking a bit much.

Genuinely interested in your thoughts and to see if we’ve somehow veered off from the corporate norm?

Thanks!

Your company is insane and I'd hare working there. There's clearly a lack of trust in your employees to need so many rules over reading bloody emails. If you need to micro manage people so much to ensure the work is done right, do it yourself.

When a senior sends and email to a junior at e.g. 8pm, they are saying 'in this workplace senior staff work late'. They set the tone and the cultural expectations.

Or they are saying they are working flexibly

Totally unacceptable to send emails outside of office hours. Very unprofessional. It’s a disciplinary matter in many work places

Well that's a load of rubbish.

It's not unprofessional if I decide to do some work on an evening or weekend- I would never expect people to respond.

It's certainly not a disciplinary matter - don't be ridiculous!

I am loving the idea of out of hours emails being a disciplinary matter.

”We need to start formal disciplinary proceedings with Angela. Her behaviour is utterly unacceptable.”
”Oh heavens. What happened?”
”She emailed me last night.”
”And what did she say?”
”I don’t know, I didn’t read it.”
”So the problem is… what?”
”Well it went ‘ping’ while I was watching Taggart.”

Sounds unnecessarily complicated and if your email policy is that bad then I'd be concerned about your other policies. Do people not have common sense anymore? Reply to all emails asap, during business hours, is surely enough.

You clearly don’t understand how much of a teachers job has to be done in the evenings, and that can require access to the day’s emails. That does not mean I give anyone permission to email me anything extra outside of school hours, because I don’t

Im sure lots of people need to refer to emails when they are working in the evenings. But they should not be getting more emails at that point

hence why it would be a disciplinary matter in many ( probably most, ime) workplaces

It absolutely and categorically is a disciplinary matter in many places, and quite rightly so

it really isn’t.

I work in a school and we've banned emails between 7pm and 7am. We made the change during the pandemic when it felt like some staff were on duty 24/7. It has been truly life changing for everyone from the head down and strangely, the work still gets done.

That’s incredibly prescriptive. Do you really NEED to tell employees when to answer email, how to communicate? How about letting them be adults and manage their own workload and time, and if there’s an issue with that- someone who ignores emails for example - then deal with it on a case by case basis.
the only team in our global company that have targets around response are the customer services team who have targets around answering calls by a certain amount of rings, and responding to emails within 24hrs but they are customer facing and order processing and they also have a system that allows for cover in place so that those targets are reached.
I’ve never seen an email policy like yours for internal employees, ever and wouldn’t expect one unless you have a massive issue with communication in your company, in which case you have a much, much bigger issue.

Of course it is a disciplinary matter. I’m assuming the reason you are getting so defensive is because you do this yourself and don’t like having it pointed out how unprofessional and rude it is.

you may well have staff with their emails open working at home because they have emailed themselves information they need for planning, documents they need to edit, etc etc.

they are entitled to work quietly in their own home without you imposing yourself on them because you think your do big and important you don’t have to organise yourself or control yourself for the welfare of your colleagues.

m I can imagine what the recipients of your out of hours emails think of you!

Exactly. It’s banned in most reasonable work places

Perhaps you are right @12Thorns, it wouldn’t have been anywhere I worked in the past 5 years (my work means I tend to operate from different workplaces a lot). Your posts have got me thinking about the concept of disciplinary matters, I have found this to be a mainly UK thing, as in I feel other work cultures I’ve worked within don’t tend to be so trigger happy with the “discipline” I wonder if there’s any evidence that it’s a good way to reduce poor practice or boost productivity?

Much of that sounds more appropriate for a service level agreement than an email policy.

We have clients that require email responses within say three hours and others where is it 24 hours, we don't have to reply to or read the various internal stuff on a set timescale.

I think the instruction that if an urgent response is required you should phone or IM is sensible for avoiding problems.

But what went ping?

Her company pc/laptop? Well, why was it turned on? That’s her fault.

Her personal device? Well, how does the company know - or is allowed to use - her personal email or her personal phone number? For a company to use her personal device or personal phone number isn’t on, no matter the time of day. Data protection?

I think this is 2 people working in very different industries in different roles debating something that it true in your workplace.

I think it is great! Although I would amend it a little to say 'all emails to be read and acknowledged by the end of the working day if at all possible, or as early as possible the next day'. I would also include something about using an out of office reply if you are not going to be in, to include an alternative contact. There should also be something in the policy about responding to meeting invitations as well!

‘When a senior sends and email to a junior at e.g. 8pm, they are saying 'in this workplace senior staff work late'. They set the tone and the cultural expectations.

Or they are saying they are working flexibly’

Are they though? Or are they sending emails at 6am, through the day and then in the evening too? My boss is like this, but in another time zone, and it’s ping ping ping all day and night. But she admits she has nothing else in her life other than an equally workaholic partner and understands that I will not be responding to her immediately.

if they’re working flexibly then they should have a message on their signature saying that and that they do not expect a response outside of normal working hours. They should also be open with their team about when they’re off for the morning or leaving early taking their ‘flexible’ time.

‘Totally unacceptable to send emails outside of office hours. Very unprofessional. It’s a disciplinary matter in many work places’

Rubbish. Many companies are global and colleagues work across time zones. I don’t expect immediate responses from colleagues in Oz, Asia or the USA.
it is unacceptable to expect an immediate response from a colleague when it’s outside their working day.
I have a work laptop and a work phone and I turn them OFF after 6pm and on weekends unless I have an absolutely urgent deadline,.

I’d echo the comments saying it’s very prescriptive and micro-managing. I get that it’s well intentioned but it would do my head in to have such a lack of flexibility and autonomy to manage my own emails.

Also, if they get an email at 16:45 and finish work at 17:00 are they expect to read it, even if they’re busy doing other things?

But many of us don’t have the luxury of being able to turn devices off and stop working while we are at home in the evenings

The expectation to read all your emails by the end of the working day is unreasonable and just too much. You’ve got “24 hours to reply and call if it’s urgent” policies, I think they are covering enough.

Good God, if it was there wouldn’t be a single person left in my firm or industry if it was a disciplinary issue.

A senior knows that when a junior gets in at 9am to an email sent at 9pm the night before, they had better get on it as that person was a) working late and b) has already been waiting 12 hours.

So seniors should go out of their way to deliberate conceal information that juniors could and possibly should take into account when prioritising their work?

I don't really see the sense in that.

If there's a problem in this scenario, it's the senior working out of hours. If that's allowable, sending emails is allowable, and there's nothing wrong with those emails getting priority for having been sent earlier than others that have reached the recipients inbox by 9am.

Yep. Unless or until we get a law like France does, it’s entirely up to the employer whether they expect out of hours availability.