Do you send out of hours emails?

When we talk to managers about the way they work, they often tell us they send emails and work out

of hours. They always say to their teams though, "Just because I’m choosing to work out of hours,

it doesn’t mean I expect you to".

In a recent YouGov survey conducted for BITC, 55% of employees felt pressured to respond to calls or check emails after working hours, with just 45 per cent saying they feel that they can switch off from work.

So here’s the thing - it DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!

As a manager, YOU set the tone for how you expect others to behave, whether you mean to or not. YOU are the role model that people look up to to find out how things work. And even if your team aren’t actually checking their emails, they may be wondering if they’ve got any from you and that might be causing anxiety for them.

As a manager - you need to STOP sending out of hours emails. If you genuinely don’t mind working out of hours and it suits you best, think about setting a delay to send your emails during working hours, or save them all as draft and send them in the morning, but please stop setting the example to your team, whether knowingly or not, that you expect them to work out of hours too.