Daimler staff can opt to have emails deleted while on holiday

Daimler employees can head to the beach this summer without worrying about checking their emails, sparing their partners and children the frustration of work-related matters intruding on the family holiday.

The Stuttgart-based carmaker said about 100,000 German employees could now choose to have all their incoming emails automatically deleted when they are on leave so they do not return to a bulging inbox.

The sender is notified by the “Mail on Holiday” assistant that the email has not been received and is invited to contact a nominated substitute instead.

“Our employees should relax on holiday and not read work-related emails,” said Wilfried Porth, human resources board member.

Traffic jam

“With ‘Mail on Holiday’ they start back after the holidays with a clean desk. There is no traffic jam in their inbox. That is an emotional relief.”

German companies and politicians have been at the forefront of improving work-life balance amid an intense media focus on employee burnout.

In 2011, Volkswagen announced that company servers would stop routing emails to employee BlackBerrys during the evenings. Managers at Deutsche Telekom agreed to stop sending emails to staff during the evenings, weekends and holidays. If they choose to do so anyway, employees are not obliged to respond.

Meanwhile, Germany’s labour ministry told managers to stop emailing or calling staff out-of-hours except in an emergency. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014)