Bailey Naples (baileyobrian@gmail.com), CCEP, is: Director of Risk Management and Corporate Compliance with Berkshire Farm Center & Services for Youth in Canaan, NY.

Do your employees pay personal bills during work hours? Do they have extensive personal calls while on the clock? Does your company expect employees to be responsive off the clock? Do your employees feel pressured to work during their Paid Time Off?

These questions come to mind when thinking about the ethics of time management and a work/life balance. This article is to make you ponder the ethics of time management, not the legal requirements of paying employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations.

Few and far between are the corporate jobs of 9 to 5 where employees come in for a solid 8 hours of labor and go home without a word from work. Now employees roll into work and while there, they may pay some bills, make some calls, check on social media, or read the news. On the other hand, they may respond to an email sent after they have gone home for the evening, or take work home with them because “Well, it’s got to get done,” or log into their work email while on vacation because, “If I don’t, I’ll be swamped when I return.”

Does this change in work behavior balance out for the employer? Does it balance out for the employee? Have you ever done any monitoring of this behavior for your organization? Before we can answer these questions, we are going to need some statistical data.