"I wonder if Jeff sent me a reply to that email about the GIS stuff I sent him. Let me check."
Now thats not a bad thing to wonder - but at 1 am? I don't even have to pad downstairs to turn on the PC, I can just pick up the Blackberry at my bedside and check my email. That is.. if it has not already woken me up with the incoming email chime. And thats not the scary part - the scary part is that Jeff actually did send me a reply, at 11 pm his time. And we are not talking "urgent" stuff.
So how many of us check in with the 'office' outside of office hours. How often? How about on weekends? On vacations? Is this because we can? So what are the implications of "unplugging" for the normal legal aid techie? Do your programs rely on you to check in or be available (virtually) all the time, especially when you are on vacation?
Here are a few statistics from a CareerBuilder Survey of IT workers.
This is a good scenario to include in any program's disaster planning. Lets talk about vacations, now that summer is upon us.
Is there work-life balance? Even people who don't work at home access work email, voicemail etc. I think programs should support a reasonable expectation that sometimes people are truly not working. For example, unless I have a true must-meet deadline I prefer to check my email for the last time on Sat. morning then turn off the computer until Monday morning.
I know there are plenty of law firms that buy Blackberries for attorney staff who then must be on-call all the time. But legal services programs should not have this expectation as a general rule. Sure, an attorney may need to be available for some kind of emergency - but most things are not emergencies.
Also, people can have a sick day where they check in at the beginning of the day then just go back to bed. As for vacation - that's a bit harder. With some pre-planning and reassigning a person should be able to get their key responsibilities covered for vacation time. Sometimes there is a pending project or must-do situation that interferes but surely we all need time that is off. Since I haven't taken a vacation in about 2 years I will test this for myself later in July. I hope that at least a few days will be email and phone free - don't know yet. There are lots of studies out there that show that Americans take very little vacation time as it is - then they drive their families crazy by being on the phone/computer all the time!