[enobrev]

I've been working remotely for the past fifteen years, five of the most recent being a full-time employee for a large company. Because of this I've grown very accustomed to sending emails that start with "Don't read this until morning". Eventually my coworkers learn that they're going to get late-night emails from me, and that I don't expect an immediate reply - nor should they. After all, email is meant to be asynchronous.

I personally recommend not checking work emails when not working. I certainly don't. It allows for a clear head when I sit at my desk ready to work. It also allows me to work at whatever hour I'm most productive without worrying whether my colleagues are going to jump out of bed to answer one of my off-hour work emails.

[zensavona]

I have been working remotely for about 2 years now and have taken on a very similar approach. We communicate with HipChat more than email though. I have irregular working hours and sometimes I'll be online in the middle of the night, which might be the middle of the day in the office.

Write me a message or receive a message from me anytime, if I don't respond right now, that's ok.

[Afton]

Outlook 'delay delivery' option (or whatever your email client supports) is an even better way. If you don't intend someone to read and act on it until morning, you can enforce that trivially!

[supercanuck]

I work from home sometimes, and its a baseline assumption that my emails are being read by my employer. Therefore, his email serves two purposes, 1. it communicates to any line manager that he is in fact working, and 2. Letting his Coworkers know that he's expecting them to work odd hours like himself.

[fps]

1) I've worked IT or IT/operations at a handful of small to large companies over the past 15 years where I've been directly in control of email and any "snooping" requests needed to go through me. I can count on one hand the number of times a manager has asked to read their employee's email. It's either been due to some HR related issue (harassment, misuse of resources, etc.) or because the employee was unreachable and some critical info had been sitting in their inbox. Employers snooping on email in a business environment is super rare.

2) My experience managing and being managed has led me to believe that most managers want their employees to work less, and most people believe that their manager wants them to work crazy hours. Frequently these people are the same people. eg. a middle manager wants his employees to go home and not work after hours, but they assume that their manager expects them to work from home between 7 and 11 PM every night. the GP of your comment even said this - he tells his employees to not work odd hours, but he does so anyway.