Andreas Nahles, the country’s employment minister, has commissioned a report to assess the viability of the proposed ‘anti-stress law’ in light of rising stress levels and work-related mental health issues in Germany. The report will consider the effect of people being in constant contact with the office, which is largely blamed on the increasing popularity of smartphones.
Germany has already taken steps to reduce smartphone stress by making it illegal for companies to ask employees to do any work while on holiday, including answering emails. However, Ms Nahles suggests that the law should go further as people are finding it difficult to switch off mentally from work at home when they are met with repeated alerts indicating new message after new message.
She told the Rheinische Post newspaper: “There is an undeniable relationship between having to be constantly available and the rise in mental illness.”
Recent surveys have confirmed that Germans tend to take their work home with them leading to high levels of stress and in August last year, a television programme called “Stressed Germany” found that the number of sick days taken as a result of mental illness had risen by 80% in the last 15 years.
In their coalition agreement last year, the German coalition government promised that they would take action to improve individuals’ work-life balance. This appears to be a further step in this direction.