The employers who let workers "turn off" - and reap surprising rewards

The credit crunch has affected every company in the world - but one of its most surreal consequences is that the legendarily brutal working culture of Goldman Sachs has softened.

“All analysts and associates are required to be out of the office from 9pm on Friday until 9am on Sunday,” a leaked email revealed this month.

Not quite a full weekend, then - but the idea was unimaginable pre-2008. The investment bank had long been legendary for 100-hour working weeks - but has realised that holding onto employees, and keeping them healthy, has benefits.

Work stress has become an epidemic - worsened hugely by smartphones, which mean workers never ‘switch off’, according to Dr Ellie Cannon, a working GP who offers advice in Cosmopolitan, on Sky News and in the Mail on Sunday.

“Smartphones mean there is no mental break,” says Cannon. “People used to have a rest, for example when they were walking to buy lunch - or just on the tube to work. Now work permeates every aspect of people’s life. Emails and messages never stop.”

                                        [Natwest and RBS still suffering 'glitch']

Naturally, the change is not entirely altruistic - allowing employees to turn off means they work harder. One analyst, Basex, claimed that information overload, and the ‘fluid’ boundary between work and leisure time meant employees wasted time at work, costing the U.S. economy $1 trillion a year.

In Germany, a new law aims to stop work ‘creeping’ into people’s lives. Companies such as BMW and Volkswagen now obey strict rules about contacting employees out of hours. At Volkswagen, the work email devices used by employees turn off automatically 30 minutes after work.

Cannon says British companies should follow suit to keep their workers healthy, “Adopt no phone policies in lunch areas, work gyms and meeting rooms," she advises. "Instil a culture of the old-fashioned lunch break, and make sure it really is a break.”

Cannon says that she sees patients suffering from stress who admit to taking their phone to the bathroom. “I hate my BlackBerry,” she says, “I always harp on about work stress and health - and smartphones definitely make it worse.”

"The goal is for our analysts to want to be here for a career. This is a marathon, not a sprint,” said David Solomon of Goldman Sachs. Economic slowdown might in fact be good for our health, recent research published in the British Medical Journal has shown.

When economies expand, death rates increased for both middle aged and older people, but they fell when economies were heading for recession.
  
On average, for every one percentage point increase in GDP, death rates rose by 0.36% among 70-74 year olds, and by 0.38% among 40-44 year olds.
      
Unhealthy lifestyles and road traffic accidents increase when economies are in good health, but are unlikely to fully explain the trends, they say. Perhaps allowing workers a proper weekend is just the start.