Almost half of those who can check their email outside of work hours frequently do, according to the latest research coming out of the University of South Australia.

Few do it for the love of the job, but feel obliged to because of the creeping ubiquity of the workplace, according to the Morning, noon and night. The infiltration of work email into personal and family life report.

“These findings suggest that workers have internalised a responsibility for managing high workloads and ‘frame’ their constant connection,” the report’s co-author Dr Natalie Skinner said.

The report followed almost 1,400 people across Australia in February, with the majority who checked their emails saying they did because they feel that knowing what is happening at the workplace is vital for their workload management.

“Although workers do not report that they felt this practice was intrusive or tiring, there are very clear associations with work-life outcomes. Those workers who are very frequent (every hour or so) email checkers in non-work time also have the highest levels of work-life interference,” Dr Skinner said.

“The effect of checking emails outside of work hours also differs for men and women. Whilst the timing of email checking makes no difference to men’s work-life outcomes, for women checking emails before breakfast or on holidays is associated with the highest work-life interference of all groups in the study.”

The report can be downloaded here.