Having been away from the blogosphere for a few days I’m playing catch up with some of the stories I saw over the Christmas break. One caught my eye – which was the one about Volkswagen – which had agreed to stop its Blackberry servers sending emails to some of its employees when they are off-shift.

The move follows criticism of internal emails by Thierry Breton, the CEO of the French information technology services giant, Atos. He said workers at his firm were wasting hours of their lives on internal messages both at home and at work. He has taken the more radical step of banning internal email altogether from 2014. They have some time to prepare…

Last month the maker of Persil washing powder, Henkel, also declared an email “amnesty” for its workers between Christmas and New Year saying messages should only be sent out as an emergency measure.

Email and the ‘always-on’ technology has become part of our lives. We are used to being bombarded with information – and being contactable most days (and nights). It is difficult to ignore this persistence. People have developed a habit of walking around staring at their iPhones or Blackberries. We get text, email and Facebook updates. Twitter punctuates these.

I can see that the limit on emails for these big organisations is a positive move. But I’m not sue we can go back to living without email. It does make life easier in lots of ways. I can attach images / videos. I can get information to clients quickly. We can collaborate with people. But most importantly I don’t have to rely on the laughable Royal Mail.

I do think though that sometimes we do forget that we are dealing with people – and that communicating face to face is sometimes what is needed. My business is a people business, it’s not an electronic paperless always-on business – even if it does feel like that sometimes!