CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Work Email After Hours

NARRATOR: It has become a familiar ritual of modern working life: the phone glows on the nightstand at eleven at night, and a message from the office demands, or seems to demand, immediate attention. Ontario already requires larger employers to have a written policy on disconnecting from work, and a growing chorus of advocates would go much further, prohibiting after-hours email altogether. Critics regard such bans as well-intentioned but clumsy.

NARRATOR: Occupational psychologist Nadia Ferreira, who studies workplace burnout, is among the ban's most persuasive proponents. Her research suggests that the damage is not confined to the minutes spent replying. Employees who merely anticipate a late message, she argues, never fully disengage, and the evening becomes a kind of unpaid standby shift. Ferreira also contends that voluntary guidelines rarely protect those who need protection most. A senior manager can comfortably ignore a request at ten o'clock; a new hire on probation, she observes, almost certainly cannot. Only an explicit rule, in her view, removes the guesswork.

NARRATOR: Graham Whitfield, who runs a software company with employees in four time zones, is unconvinced, though he hardly dismisses the problem. He readily admits that the culture of instant replies has become corrosive, and that he himself once expected answers within the hour. His objection is to the remedy. Several of his staff, he points out, deliberately log off at three o'clock to collect their children and finish their work after bedtime. A rigid ban would effectively penalize precisely the flexibility they value. Whitfield prefers what he calls send whenever, answer tomorrow: messages may arrive at any hour, but nobody is expected to respond before the next working day, and managers schedule non-urgent emails for the morning.

NARRATOR: Ferreira, to her credit, concedes that blanket prohibitions may be unworkable for organizations spanning several continents, and suggests exemptions for genuine emergencies. Yet she remains skeptical that informal norms will survive the first demanding client or looming deadline. Unwritten expectations, she warns, have a way of quietly reasserting themselves. Ultimately, the dispute may be less about email than about trust. A ban assumes that employers cannot be relied upon to exercise restraint; Whitfield's approach assumes they can. Which assumption is more realistic probably depends on the workplace, and perhaps on who happens to be sending the message. For now, many of us will keep the phone on the nightstand and hope it stays dark until the morning.