What happens when employees send emails after hours?

First, why might this happen so much?

• Email receivers overestimate senders' response speed expectations. (But a small adjustment can mitigate this!) (Guirge and Bohns 2021)

Main effects:

• Sending work-related email after hours decreases psychological detachment (Kubo et al 2021; Tedone 2022), increases work-family conflict (Tedone 2022), and lowers sleep quality (Kubo et al 2021).
• Organizational expectations for email monitoring (distinct from the sending of emails) is also associated with employee stress and anxiety (Becker et al 2019)
• Not good for employers either: may increase employee "time theft" (Xu et al 2022) and procrastination (Li and She 2022)

Moderators:

• Negative effects are stronger among those who feel more "telepressure", i.e. a psychological state characterized by a preoccupation and urge to respond to work-related messages (Tedone 2022), lower work-home boundaries (Barber and Jenkins 2014), and lower conscientiousness (Li and She 2022)
  
• Receiving after-hour emails that have a more negatively perceived tone seems to increase fatigue at bedtime (Minnen et al 2020)
• Smartphone use for work may be especially bad relative to other technologies like computers or tablets for sleep and depletion (Lanaj et al 2014).

Caveats

• Research is almost entirely correlational and relies on self-reported measures

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