Obsessively checking your email inbox on your mobile phone could be jeopardising your mental health and those of colleagues, writes Adriana Calado.

Checking your emails persistently in the evening might make you look like a devoted worker, but it could also be one of the seven deadly email sins identified by a Kingston University lecturer.

Occupational psychologist Dr Emma Russell, a lecturer at Kingston Business School, said: “Some workers become so obsessed that they think their phone has vibrated or bleeped with an incoming email when in fact it has not.

"Others said they felt they needed to physically hold their smartphone when they were not at their desk so that they were in constant email contact."

Another sign you may be a sinner is emailing while with company, taking you away from what is going on around you.

The seven sins identified by the study of 28 workers from different companies, were:

1 Ping pong – constant emails back and forth creating long chains

2 Emailing out of hours

3 Emailing while in company

4 Ignoring emails completely

5 Requesting read receipts

6 Responding immediately to an email alert

7 Automated replies

Dr Russell said with broadband and 3G people could not just check their emails once a day as they used to in the past but had not adapted their habits.

Are you an email sinner? Contact the newsdesk on 020 8744 4264 or leave a comment below.