Maybe this time it's the law.
Back in April of 2014 numerous headlines in the English language press reported on a new French law banning the use of work-related email after formal work hours. As the clearly pro-business The Economist reported:
WHEN a new French law banned employees from checking work e-mails after 6pm, it was bound to grab headlines. It fit all too neatly the image held by les anglo-saxons of France as a work-shy nation of long lunches and short working weeks. And all too neat it was. In fact, no such law existed. But by the time anybody noticed, the damage had been done, prompting Axelle Lemaire, the new French minister for the digital economy, to tweet a denial (in English) on April 13th.
The Economist wasn't pleased, since such a ban would hinder at least some of the international commerce that French companies dealt with. But it wasn't exactly a ban. It was more of a work-agreement between businesses and unions, and the workers the agreement covered were those already putting in very long hours. So whether or not that agreement had the authority of law is apparently open to question, but with the start of 2017 a French law passed in May of 2016 (and this time it seems to really be a law) came into effect. As a BBC report tells it:
Companies of more than 50 people will be obliged to draw up a charter of good conduct, setting out the hours - normally in the evening and at the weekend - when staff are not supposed to send or answer emails.
A "charter of good conduct" is still rather vague. Judging from what that BBC report adds, however, the intent is definitely to reestablish boundaries between the work day and what used to be leisure:
But the French government says the problem of permanent connection is universal and growing - and that intervention is needed.
"All the studies show there is far more work-related stress today than there used to be, and that the stress is constant," Socialist MP Benoit Hamon tells me.
"Employees physically leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash - like a dog. The texts, the messages, the emails - they colonise the life of the individual to the point where he or she eventually breaks down."
The report interviews Linh Le, a management consultant, who clearly describes the issue that this column has been trying to examine:
"At home the workspace can be the kitchen or the bathroom or the bedroom. We shift from a work email to a personal WhatsApp to a Facebook picture to a professional text - all on the same tool," says Linh Le, a partner at Elia management consultants in Paris.
"You're at home but you're not at home, and that poses a real threat to relationships," she says.
Le says the businesses she advises are increasingly aware of the dangers to staff. The most extreme threat is so-called burnout which she describes as "physical, psychological and emotional distress caused by a total inability to rest".
But the fact that reestablishing a clear boundary between work and home would seem to be a common-sense need in today's world doesn't mean that it's going to happen. Some workers don't like the forced restrictions. One argues that a law shouldn't tell him when and when not to use his email, and another raises the ever-present fear that if the French don't work as hard as other countries, their businesses will lose out:
"In my company we compete with Indian, Chinese, American developers. We need to talk to people around the world late into the night. Our competitors don't have the same restrictions.
"If we obeyed this law we would just be shooting ourselves in the foot."
And I guess that all this suggests that even when we're aware of how problematic the meshing of work and home can be to us, many of us are still not ready to do anything about it.
Go to: Making Jack dull.