For sure, it’s not something you hear very often these days, and especially in the corporate world, yet the Volkswagen Group has agreed to give 1,154 employees in Germany some peace of mind at home by stopping stop its Blackberry servers sending emails after normal work hours and weekends.
The move comes after several VW employees complained that the line between work and home had become more and more blurred, while the problem of over exhaustion from work has made headlines in Germany following the recent resignation of Bundesliga football coach Ralf Rangnick, who was diagnosed with fatigue syndrome, and is said to have suffered from a psychological burn-out.
Under the deal that the VW Group made with the works council, the company will stop its e-mail server from routing messaging traffic to the German employees that are covered by collective labor agreements, 30 minutes after their shift has ended and resume 30 minutes before it starts again in the morning.
Ironically, a spokesman for Volkswagen’s works council didn’t respond to a voicemail message left by BusinessWeek, though AFP was more lucky.
“A deal has been reached”, a VW spokesperson told the news agency. “As a company, we need and make use of up-to-date means of communicatio But we realise that a balance needs to be struck. We feel this deal strikes such a balance,” he added.
Story References: AFP & BusinessWeek
