This finding should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the literature on email, detachment, and work-life balance, but a new study finds that the “[m]ere expectation of checking work email after hours harms health of workers and families.”

Employer expectations of work email monitoring during nonwork hours are detrimental to the health and well-being of not only employees but their family members as well… [according to] a new study… showing that such expectations result in anxiety, which adversely affects the health of employees and their families. “The competing demands of work and nonwork lives present a dilemma for employees,” [coauthor William] Becker said, “which triggers feelings of anxiety and endangers work and personal lives.”

Here’s the abstract of the Academy of Management article, “Killing me softly: Electronic communications monitoring and employee and spouse well-being:”

Using boundary theory and the affect-as-information framework, this paper tests the relationship between organizational expectations to monitor electronic communication during non-work hours and employee and their significant others’ health and relationship satisfaction. We theorize that organizational expectations trigger frequent employee micro-transitions during nonwork time, eliciting negative affect and leading to decreases in well-being. In a sample of 142 dyads of full time employees and their significant others, we found that detrimental health and relationship effects of expectations were mediated by negative affect. This includes crossover effects of electronic communication expectations on partner health and martial satisfaction. Our findings extend literature on work-related electronic communication at the interface of work and non-work and deepen our understanding of the impact of organizational expectations on employees and their families.

There’s decades of research on the importance of what psychologists call “detachment” for helping workers recharge, and having email hovering over their off-time is one of the most effective ways of destroying detachment. Any company that doesn’t have an explicit policy about after-hours email use— and either formally allows workers to turn off email after hours, or combines a better reason for requiring workers to check in than “the boss might have a brainstorm” or “the client might have a question” with some counterbalancing policy (like more vacation time)— is engaged in professional malpractice.