Managers also spend on average 6.9 hours a week on work-related emails and calls outside of normal working hours.
New research* reveals that senior managers spend on average 18.9 hours a year on work-related calls and emails whilst on holiday.
Only 5% of the senior managers interviewed said that they completely switch off on holiday and don’t look at work emails or take work-related calls. Conversely, some 6% said that they spend over 50 hours of their holiday time doing this.
| Amount of time managers spend a year on work-related calls or emails whilst on holiday | Percentage of senior managers |
| None | 5% |
| Up to five hours | 15% |
| Between five and 10 hours | 21% |
| Between 11 and 20 hours | 23% |
| Between 21 and 30 hours | 14% |
| Between 31 and 50 hours | 12% |
| Over 50 hours | 6% |
| Don’t know | 5% |
In addition to this, Onecom’s survey also found that managers spend on average 6.9 hours a week on work-related emails and calls outside of normal working hours. Only 2% said that they didn’t do this at all.
| Amount of time managers spend a week on work-related calls or emails outside of normal working hours | Percentage of managers |
| None | 2% |
| Up to three hours | 21% |
| Between three and five hours | 32% |
| Between six and 10 hours | 27% |
| Between 11 and 20 hours | 6% |
| Between 21 and 30 hours | 5% |
| Over 30 hours | 1% |
| Don’t know | 5% |
Although modern-day work-life can require workers to stay switched on constantly to business matters outside of the office to avoid the potentially costly impact of missing correspondence, it’s equally important that company chiefs set an example of working smarter rather than working all hours to achieve success.
Parysa Hoseini-Sech, Head of Human Resources Onecom, said: “At Onecom, we’ve adopted ‘agile working.’ It’s a popular approach that recognises the priority we put on a healthy work-life balance. Ultimately, it lets our teams work in a way that suits them but still within the core hours.
Our vision is to use technology to help us all work more effectively and allow for greater flexibility in terms of when, where and how our people work to drive productivity and give our people the autonomy that will make it easy to strike the right balance for them.”
For business owners and employees who can’t afford to completely unplug from the office during their time off, strong telecommunications platforms are essential in giving them the freedom to disengage from work without the added stress of weak connectivity.
* Onecom commissioned Consumer Intelligence to interview 208 employees of manager level or above. The survey was conducted on 22nd May 2019. Respondents represented the demographic profile of the UK.