Google experiment asked employees to leave their devices at work to improve work-life balance

Google’s campus in Dublin, Ireland, where Google Goes Dark was trialled

After an employee survey revealed the not terribly surprising news that more than two-thirds of Google employees were unable to stop thinking about work after leaving the office, the company trialled an approach called Google Goes Dark in which staff were asked to leave their work devices at the front desk when they left the office for the day.

Writing in the Harvard Review, Google’s senior VP of People Operations reports that 69 percent of Google employees were found to have difficulty switching off from work, promoting a successful trial of the program in Dublin, Ireland.

[For many], work looms constantly in the background.  They not only find themselves checking email all evening, but pressing refresh on gmail again and again to see if new work has come in […]

Googlers [in the trial] reported blissful, stressless evenings.

Via Business Insider