My dinner guest excused himself politely and left the table to respond to a Blackberry summons.

When he returned, the table topic turned to techno-tyranny - the electronic devices that tether so many of us to our offices.

My guest said he was glad to carry a Blackberry - he could enjoy an evening out and didn't feel chained to his home phone.

It's a condition of his employment, he said, like the 10- to 12-hour workdays expected of him in his position as a middle manager.

But not so long ago, a night duty manager would have been onsite to handle questions and emergencies. And the "convenience" that allowed us to enjoy his company was saving his employer a salary.

Willingly, unwittingly or reluctantly, has this generation of wage earners been turned into wage slaves, at their masters' beck and call any hour, anywhere?

"Cellphones, Blackberries and Internet connections are breaking down the barriers between office and home," says Carmi Levy, a senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont.

A company survey showed 81 per cent of employees feel obligated to be available to their employers after work hours - and 15 per cent of respondents feel absolutely obligated to be on call 24/7.

Employees and employers are paying a price for it, though.

At its simplest level, being on call after hours stretches the work week.

Researchers from the University of California crunched data from 55,000 households randomly surveyed in the 2001 California Health Interview Study. What they found should have us all ignoring the ringtone more often. People who worked between 40 and 51 hours a week were 17 per cent more likely to report hypertension; those who logged more than 51 hours are 30 per cent more likely to have high blood pressure.

Long hours mean less downtime and time to relax, which increases stressload.

And, as we know, stressed employees cost money. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, about 20 per cent of the payroll of a typical company goes to dealing with stress-related problems such as absenteeism, employee turnover, benefit payments and disability leaves.

It increases stress at home, too, because there's less time for life's varied duties - getting kids to practices, taking elderly parents to doctors' appointments.

This is a major cause of work/life conflict - and that has a cost, too.

In the Health Canada-sponsored 2001 National Work-Life Conflict Study, 70 per cent of employees surveyed were parents, 60 per cent had elder care, 13 per cent cared for a disabled relative, and 13 per cent had both child-care and elder-care responsibilities. If most of those employees are working longer, that's a lot of work-life conflict.

Health Canada pegs the cost to business at $4.5-$10 billion a year to pay for temporary replacement workers, increased benefits for absent employees and training replacements.

That's not counting presenteeism, when the employees' bodies show up, but are too tired, too stressed, too burned out, or have brains too fogged to be productive.

In a knowledge-base workplace, brain fog from fatigue causes accidents and reduces productivity.

Employers have enthusiastically embraced technology - it saves money, at least in the short term.

Increased global competitive pressure, as well as the concentration on the bottom line to the exclusion of other facets of a healthy business, has created problems for managers wanting to do more with less.

"A smartphone can replace a body," says Levy. "It can be a cheap and dirty way to squeeze extra performance from employees" without increasing compensation. It can "make your people, money and time go farther.”

But it also creates employees who find themselves incapable of turning off on what should be downtime.

Levy draws a straight line from stressed families to unhappy employees to a company's long-term bottom line.

When employers rely on technology rather than beefing up staff, it causes employee burnout, low morale and problems retaining and recruiting employees - and with growing shortages of skilled workers, a company with a bad rep as a workplace will begin to feel like a revolving door, with staff (and money) constantly hitting the street.

Nobody wants to feel like a wage slave. And any student of history knows what follows slavery - rebellion and revolution.

The key, says Levy, is to see technology as a tool, not a saviour or a master. "At some point, we have to separate ourselves from our tools."

Employers and employees also have a role to play in changing things. For example, employers can establish clear policies about after-hours communication.

"Expectations need to be clear," says Levy. Find out who should and should not carry devices on the weekends and after hours, and compensate or recognize those who do in an appropriate manner.

Write a clear policy about e-mails and cellphone calls, outlining when it's inappropriate to send and respond to such communication.

Tell employees clearly what you expect about after-hours e-mail and phone calls (for instance, if core business hours are nine-to-five, and you normally expect a response within two hours, it's appropriate for employees to respond to communications after 5 p.m. by 11 a.m. the next morning.

When hiring, be honest about your expectations regarding evening availability, and compensation or recognition for the service.

And recognize that being able to contact employees 24/7 increases the opportunities for abuse - it gives micromanagers and bullies the ability to intrude into employees' home life.

Signs you may need a formal policy include fatigued employees, lower productivity, an increase in employee assistance program claims, tardiness (employees can be late because they've slept in because they were called late or because they've had to squeeze in family duties before work) and a higher level of turnover.

Employees need to take some responsibility, too, by drawing some boundaries when affected by time abuse.

If it creates a problem, tell your supervisor. "I need sleep or I'll be a zombie on shift, so please don't expect me to respond after 9 p.m.," or, "I'm a single mom with young kids, I'm not available after I leave the office."

Setting limits is important, says Levy, because once the work/home boundary has been breached, it raises expectations about availability. Soon working after-office hours "becomes the new normal, and you have no life of your own."

There's a word for people like that. Slaves.

(Sharon Adams can be reached at sharon@businessedge.ca)