Have the last few years left you feeling burned out? Have you found the lines between work life and home life more and more blurred? It’s a serious issue for employees in the age of the hybrid office. The American Psychological Association 2021 Work and Well-being Survey of adult workers in the U.S. found that 79% of employees had experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey, and nearly three in five reported negative effects from that stress.

Heineken created a Bluetooth-enabled bottle opener that puts nearby laptops into sleep mode when it’s used to open a bottle of beer.

Heineken came up with a tongue-in-cheek solution to the problem: a high-tech bottle opener dubbed The Closer that shuts down work applications when a bottle of Heineken is opened with it. The branded bottle opener uses Bluetooth technology to put nearby laptops into sleep mode, a Heineken spokesperson told Adweek. It’s a simple, but clever idea – and a great example of the power of promotional products.

“As a brand, we have always stood for creating moments of shared connections with others,” said Bram Westenbrink, global head of the Heineken brand. “With the once-rigid boundaries between work and personal time rapidly deteriorating following the COVID-19 pandemic, we want to spark a much-needed conversation about the importance of resisting the societal pressures to be in a constant state of busy work and encourage workers around the world to reprioritize social and leisure time with the people who matter most.”

Heineken plans an exclusive launch event with actor Billy Eichner giving a keynote address. Workers in the U.S. will be able to enter for a chance to win a Closer bottle opener on June 8, but the promotion will only be open from 10 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. ET. Heineken will also reward some of the first recipients with beer money once they use the Closer to shut down their computers at the end of the workday.

The idea of the bottle opener, according to Heineken, is that workers already have everything they need to close down right at their fingertips.

“As people continue to feel like they have to work all the time, they’re forgetting that disconnecting is even an option,” said Bruno Bertelli, global chief creative officer of Publicis Worldwide, the lead agency that created the campaign for Heineken. The Closer, he added, isn’t just technology. “It’s a social provocation to help people see that the pressure to work all the time is getting a little ridiculous, and we all have the power to log off and go hang out with our friends again.”

Heineken says the bottle opener is a symbol that’s meant to spark conversation and help change our relationship to work, starting with its own employees. The company, which has more than 80,000 employees worldwide, established an employee wellbeing program last year to help identify the causes of work-life imbalance and share best practices for addressing them.

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