80% of Workers Tied to Job—at Home

Extra time adds up to nearly an extra work day per week
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 3, 2012 6:02 AM CDT
80% of Workers Tied to Job—at Home
Mobile technology is giving workers exciting new opportunities to work unpaid overtime.   (Shutterstock)

Mobile devices are keeping huge numbers of workers chained to the office in their downtime, according to a study by Good Technology. Some 80% of workers polled by the company said they kept working after leaving the office mainly by answering calls and emails, and half of those said they did so because they felt they had "no choice," TechCrunch reports. The work outside the office added up to an average of an extra seven hours a week—almost a full extra work day, or an extra month and a half of work per year.

A whopping 68% said they checked work email before 8am, while 40% checked after 10pm—and half of poll respondents admitted to checking work email while still in bed. Some 38% routinely checked work emails at the dinner table, while 57% did so on family outings. A quarter of the 1,000 people polled said the overtime caused the occasional disagreement with their partner, but well over half said their partner had no problem with them checking work email or answering calls at home—possibly because they were busy working themselves. (More working stories.)

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