Volkswagen is fighting the good fight in work-life balance by stopping its BlackBerry servers from delivering email to employees after regular work hours. The plan, which applies to VW Germany workers with trade-union-negotiated contracts, only permits emails to be delivered during a window that begins 30 minutes before an employee's shift and ends 30 minutes after quitting time.
"At Volkswagen, flexitime is between 0730-1745," said Gunnar Killian, the works council spokesman at VW. "With our new arrangement, workers can only receive emails between 0700 and 1815."
Naturally, VW's after-hours email access isn't restricted for senior management -- and employees can still make calls with their device at all hours -- but the rule is a good start in drawing a hard line between work and play. For another company with an aggressive approach to email and productivity, check out this story on tech company Atos.
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