Organizational psychologist at Wharton, #1 NYT bestselling author of HIDDEN POTENTIAL and THINK AGAIN, and host of the TED podcasts WorkLife and Re:Thinking
1000% agree. 18 years ago, I had this employee who thought his way to the top was working 24/7, including weekends (which we are closed). I told him to unplug, take this young kid to the zoo. We wouldn't stop, so here is what I did. At 6pm Friday night, I changed his password and then I restored it Monday morning at 8am. I made it so he couldn't log into email or other systems. Problem solved.
Couldn't have said it better! Managers should not be telling their employees to work beyond their hours just because they choose to. It's a choice. If you are okay with doing that, great, but do not force that upon others. Not every person's life is the same and some cannot do this. Do not penalize your people for not working beyond their limits because then you limit your employees abilities as they become more and more overwhelmed and exhausted. ❤️🩹
Only implemented if there is a strong labour law. If resources are more than demand then glorifying overwork is a tool to verify
Not to mention, when planned time off / unplugging is intentional, people have something to look forward to, and often push for better results prior to their time off, knowing the opportunity to decompress is coming.
Many high-achieving professionals are in motion constantly with productivity tied to their sense of worthiness - an expectation handed down to them, that they hold others to, as well. That pressure eventually suffocates well-being. Breaking that cycle of humans DOING to humans BEING is where presence and joy live. Boundaries are foundational to that process. Organizational change anchors when it is modeled from the top-down.
YES. We can’t say we care about well-being and then punish people for having boundaries (and let's be honest, we've all seen this show up in performance conversations.) If we're still judging dedication by who replies to emails at 10 PM or takes Saturday morning calls, or who's green on Teams at 6 am, we are not rewarding impact, we are rewarding burnout Leaders, this one is on us. How do we change it? We model it.
Definitely right, thank youuu for sharing this
Totally. Burnout doesn’t build loyalty—boundaries do. If your team can’t unplug, they’ll eventually shut down completely. Let rest fuel the results.
Work + Rest = Increased Performance When employees rest, they return stronger. Great lesson, Adam
Organizational psychologist at Wharton, #1 NYT bestselling author of HIDDEN POTENTIAL and THINK AGAIN, and host of the TED podcasts WorkLife and Re:Thinking
2moPeople even got penalized for being offline to care for sick family members. In the research, the best way to reduce the detachment penalty was for workplaces to set policies like no emails on weekends: