How after hours emails impact job satisfaction

“INDIA NEEDS A BREAK” 88% of Indian employees are contacted after office hours. It’s not dedication—it’s exploitation. A recent survey by Indeed highlights a troubling reality: • 85% of employees are contacted during sick leave or holidays. • 79% fear missing promotions if they aren’t always available. This isn’t sustainable. We’re in a work-life balance crisis, and it’s only worsening. Why does this happen? • Calls during sick leave • Messages on public holidays • A culture that equates availability with commitment The impact? Burnout. Anxiety. Reduced productivity. But there’s hope: • 8 in 10 employers support a ‘right to disconnect’ policy. What needs to change? 1. Respecting off-hours. 2. Honoring sick leave. 3. Valuing public holidays. 4. Promoting based on performance, not constant availability. 5. Implementing ‘right to disconnect’ policies nationwide. Remember: A rested workforce is a productive workforce. Managers, take note: Your top talent is one intrusive call away from burnout. Employees, know this: Your personal time is non-negotiable. It’s time to create workplaces where people thrive—not just survive. What do you think? How can we make work better for everyone in India? #WorkLifeBalance #EmployeeRights #CorporateCulture

It's Sunday night. Are you about to send a work email? Don't. (At least if your company's normal workweek is Monday-Friday! If you work for a company with a work from anywhere anytime policy, that's amazing! This may not apply to you. But in a traditional business with set hours like I've worked in most of my career? Read on.) Before leaving the corporate world earlier this year to launch my own business, I worked in the world of HR for nearly 30 years, leading HR for 25. So I get it. If you are a leader, you can't always shut your laptop at the end of the day Friday and forget about work. But you can try. And if it's not possible, you can help make sure your team has a much needed weekend or evening break. How? If your work hours are all over the place, schedule that email to be sent during normal business hours. It's easy to do in most platforms. (NOTE: This is easiest if your team is in one time zone on roughly the same schedule - it's trickier, but not impossible, to work with each team member's time zone.) You may tell your team it's ok not to respond to emails, or even have a bounceback email that says something like that. But what matters more than intent is impact. The impact of a team leader sending copious amounts of emails during non-work hours can have the unintended consequence of making your team feel like they have to work 24/7. That they have to check their email constantly even when off for a day or a week. And while that may be in some cases, and certainly urgent issues come up from time to time, most of the time it's habit. That feeling of always having to be on is not sustainable to most people - and can and will lead to burnout. We talked about this a lot with the executive team at my last company because my team members felt this deeply from all across the company. As executives we couldn't necessarily always shut off at the end of a day or week. But we could make sure our people did. If we had to be plugged in or wanted to be catching up on email on the weekends, we scheduled our emails to be sent during the workweek. If something came up that was urgent and we needed a team member? We called. It wasn't perfect. But it was something. And it gave my team - who felt comfortable bringing up these concerns - a break. Which gave everyone else who might not have been comfortable saying something a break as well. Most of the time that email can wait. And that gives you a break too.

Healthcare leaders are accidentally creating 24/7 anxiety in their teams. And most don't even realize they're doing it. Here's the wake-up call every executive needs 👇 Your communication timing is silently destroying your team's mental health. That "quick update" at 11 PM?  ↳ It kept three nurses awake wondering if there's a crisis. That urgent email on Sunday?  ↳ It ruined your manager's family time. That last-minute meeting request?  ↳ It triggered panic about job security. Anne Morrow Lindbergh said it best: "Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." 🔴 The hidden damage of poor timing: - Late-night messages create anxiety, not urgency - Friday "bombshells" destroy weekends - Constant "urgent" flags make nothing feel urgent What your team experiences: 👎🏻 Midnight emails = "Am I expected to always be available?" 👎🏻 Everything marked urgent = "What's the real emergency?"  👎🏻 Emergency meetings = "What crisis are we hiding?" The boundaries your team needs: ✅ Send non-urgent messages during business hours only  ✅ Give 24-48 hour notice for important conversations  ✅ Reserve "urgent" for actual emergencies 📌PS… Your team is already carrying enough stress. Don't add to it with thoughtless communication habits. Ready to transform your communication impact? ➡️ Take my Healthy Communication Assessment and discover how your timing affects team wellbeing. 👇🏻 Takes 3 minutes: https://lnkd.in/g2pcMPUT

Unwritten Rule: Stop emailing after hours. 70% of managers send emails outside of working hours. There are unintended impacts from this action: - Late-night emails not only stretches your day, it stretches your team's day. - It also increases anxiety and reduces the amount of quality sleep one gets (sender or receiver). Look, I get it: Leaders and managers are often wired to keep the ball rolling – any time, all the time. ◾ There's a simple rule of thumb that helps: - Make sure the critical items are taken care of, - While not encroaching on your team's family time. 1. 𝐄m𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬 - happen 20% of the time. - This will require communication outside of normal hours. - Urgent matters need handling and you're there to lead the charge. 2. 𝐒𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 - is 80% of the time. - It's the pause that allows rest and rejuvenation for your team. Respect of personal boundaries creates a healthy work environment. - It motivates employees. - It promotes loyalty. High-performing teams are made from a balance that encourages rest as much as effort. This means when they are working, they're giving you the very best of their energy and creativity. So before hitting 'send' post-hours, ask yourself: Can it wait till morning? (or use the delay function on your email!) Because respecting the sanctity of personal time doesn't only improve well-being, it sets the stage for more vibrant and sustained performance. ** If this struck a chord, pass it on ♻. Follow me, Lindsey Bell, to receive more "Unsolicited Career Advice" every Tuesday morning!

"'I'm sending this at 9pm but no rush!' Yeah, I've made this big mistake, too. I thought adding 'not urgent' to my late-night emails made me a flexible boss. I was wrong. The truth is, there's no such thing as a 'no rush' email from your CEO at midnight. What's your company's unwritten rule about after-hours communication? I learned this because my team feels safe enough to give me constructive feedback. Someone once told me they felt guilty about not responding to my 'optional' late-night messages ASAP. That's when the schedule send function became my best friend. If I'm catching up at 9pm, those emails go out at 9am tomorrow. I knew to be an effective leader and to maintain our culture of balance & belonging, I had to give people real permission to disconnect. Your team doesn't need to know you're a night owl. What they need is clear permission to have true off hours.

“Charlie sends too many after-hours emails, and it gives me anxiety.” That was the feedback I received a few years ago during one of our engagement surveys. I’ll admit...it stung at first. I’ve always been passionate about my work and inspired to work when the creative energy arises; which often means sending emails outside of work hours. But, what I thought was harmless to others turned out to unintentionally impact my team’s ability to find work-life balance. That feedback was a wake-up call for me.  So, we made a change. We introduced a policy to eliminate emails after 6pm. This policy lives under our greater “Workplace Flexibility Policy” and these days, it’s becoming known as a “Right to Disconnect” policy. Either way, the guidelines are the same… Employees not expected to check or respond to messages outside of regular work hours…and, if work is done after-hours, team members are encouraged to “Schedule Send” emails to arrive during work hours. Simple but powerful. Our policy has been in place for us for a few years now, and it’s helped set the tone for healthy boundaries and work-life balance. I’m excited to see that there are larger conversations around the “Right to Disconnect,” with some nations and even U.S. states considering legislation to ensure employees can fully unplug. Whether driven by laws or company culture, the message is clear: Boundaries matter. I share this because that one piece of tough feedback ended up being a gift to me and my team. It helped me grow as a leader, helped our company culture shape and formed the DNA of who we are today. Now tell me…have you ever worked somewhere with a “Right to Disconnect” policy? Who agrees that it's time to normalize flexibility like this? 🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️ #worklifebalance #disconnect #flexibility

The Modern Workday Has No Clear Start Or Finish Feeing like your workday never ends? Apparently, you’re not alone.  Microsoft research shows office workers are buried under 117 emails & 153 Teams messages – a day – forcing many to begin work at 6AM and keep going until 10PM. Calling it the “infinite workday,” the study finds people are buried in impromptu meetings during the peak hours of the day and are left with only “two-minute slivers” of time to plan and think creatively. This relentless pace, isn’t progress—it’s a burnout breeding ground. To anyone who believes working endless hours is the clear recipe for career success – not to mention what’s required to keep one’s job – I’d say your belief system is entirely misinformed. A 2024 UC Berkeley study proves being “always on” spikes stress by 50%, dulls creativity and drives talent out the door. Exhausted workers juggling fragmented focus aren’t innovating—they’re surviving. Why do we think 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. marathons are smart? They’re truly a recipe for mediocrity. In light of remarkable research proving companies are far wiser to elevate employee well-being than to undermine it, I urge leaders to carve out meeting-free focus zones, and enforce after-hours email blackouts. Use AI to sift urgent messages from the noise – and personally become a model for balance. It’s time for us to trade the toxic grind for a culture where rest sparks brilliance, because thriving people, not drained ones, build unstoppable companies. What we have now is unsustainable. https://lnkd.in/gix2P44i

No emails after hours.  No “quick pings” on weekends. Every company needs this policy. Not just because it’s nice but because it’s smart. When people get real time to unplug, they come back sharper, stronger, and ready to crush it. Want a team that’s energized instead of exhausted? Start here: 📍Set the Rule ↳ Define clear work hours. Outside them = off-limits. ↳ Communicate it. Stick to it. No exceptions. 🧭 Lead Like You Mean It ↳ Leaders, you go first. ↳ If you send 11pm emails, guess what your team thinks is expected? ⏰ Use the Tools ↳ Scheduling exists for a reason. ↳ Write it now, send it later (Monday morning)- respect their downtime. 🌿 Normalize Logging Off ↳ Protecting offline time isn't lazy. It's leadership. ↳ Rested brains = better business. A high-performing team isn’t built on burnout.  It’s built on boundaries. Respect them, and you don’t just get productivity - you earn trust. ♻️ Pass it on - someone in your network needs this reminder.