Marshal8e6, the global provider of Web and email security technology, has called for an end to email malaise in support of Samaritans third annual Stress Down Day taking place on 6th February. Samaritans is encouraging workers to pay a small donation to take time out from daily work pressures this Friday, to help support those in emotional distress.

According to Health and Safety Executive statistics, the UK lost 13.5 million working days owing to stress; anxiety and depression in 2007 2008. During the same period, academics at Glasgow and Paisley universities conducted a survey that found that email can cause stress in the workplace. Their study identified that the pressure to constantly monitor and respond to emails caused 30 per cent of survey respondents to feel stressed and a further 28 per cent to feel driven to check and respond to a torrent of incoming emails. In fact, using monitoring software, the researchers found that workers were actually switching applications to check their email inbox up to 40 times an hour. Only 30 per cent of respondents described themselves as relaxed about reading and responding to email.

This study shows that more than half the workers surveyed were anxious about email and that s without factoring in the impact of Spam. Nor does this figure account for additional stress caused to employees who feel compelled to trawl their junk email for messages wrongly blocked by their Spam filter; who see inappropriate content that was not caught by the filter; or who worry about opening messages that might be infected with a virus, says Bradley Anstis, director of technical strategy, Marshal8e6. There are many ways to support the Samaritan s Stress Down Day campaign e.g. staff could make a donation to Samaritans in return for an hour s holiday from their email inbox. For the rest of the year, we suggest that companies ensure they use multilayered email technology to give them the peace of mind that they re keeping out all the bad stuff, without missing legitimate emails.

If you would like to speak to Bradley Anstis about the latest email and Web security threats and how enterprises can protect themselves more effectively, please contact clat Marketing at marshal8e6 eclat.co.uk or call Melanie Johnson on 01276 486000.

To find out more about Samaritans Stress Down Day, please visit http: www.stressdownday.org