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Welcome Wednesday: Work Check - Should You Message Your Teammates After Hours?

John Funk

Fran Healy Wednesday GIF by Travis

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

This is a special guest appearance episode - okay, I'm nothing special, but it's special that it's not the master communicator @Jimmy Seddon !

This is the next episode of the Atlassian podcast Work Check and deals with the non-controversial subject as to whether its okay to message (email, Slack, text, you name it) your work teammates after normal working hours. Okay, Okay - some of you are stressing out already! Non-controversial - HA!

So who is up for the great debate? Post your comments below and make yourself heard (maybe it will be telling as to what time of day you post it!).

Personally, I am probably scattered all over the map on this one. I agree with one side of the debate that it is really up to the person receiving the message to set boundaries. Hey, you don't have to read that email or respond to it after hours if you don't want to. Others feel the pressure to respond depending on who the messenger was. Which means they have already read the message after hours!

I work as a consultant across multiple time zones - not sure that I really have a "work day" timeframe. And literally try to coordinate schedules, incoming emails, etc. with my iPhone because I have multiple laptops required to support multiple clients. So, if you send it, I'm going to see it (assuming I am awake).

That can get annoying if it is outside of the normal timeframe I expect to see things. Or if the phone buzzes in the middle of the night (yes, there's do not disturb - but that doesn't really work with my personality either). That said, I tend to fall on the side that says it should be discouraged, but it's really up to the receiver to set the boundary.

So, what's it gonna be? Yea or Nay? Should you message your teammates after hours? What side do you fall on? Did you agree with who was declared winner of the debate?

Thankfully, Jimmy will be back next week and Welcome Wednesday will be back in the hands of the professional.

Enjoy the week!

The Office gif. John Krasinski as Jim sits in the passenger seat of a parked car, wearing a fake moustache and gray jumpsuit. He looks at us with discomfort as he reclines the chair out of sight behind the car door.

Comments

Alex Koxaras -Relational-

Hi @John Funk

This is a nice topic you have chosen! The proper choice for me is that you shouldn't message your teammates after hours. However, since you can't force someone to act the way you want, then you have to set your boundaries (e.g. snooze Slack notifications, or remove it from your mobile phone etc).

The problem is getting bigger when bosses tend to forget that employees work for a specific time period and they want non the less to annoy an employee with a call. In Greece you will find that the majority of the employers can act like this (thank God that I'm fortunate enough that both last companies do not have this culture). In this case, the employee can feel that by not answering the phone might lead to lose his job, and sometimes this can be the case of a "low performance" employee.

To sum up, one can send any notification to anyone after hours. That's their prerogative. But the other person receiving that text/call (you name it) is not obliged in anyway of replying to any message/email/phone call.

John Funk

Well said!

Kristin Lyons

There are days when I don't work the typical 9-5 even though I still put in my 8 hours of work, so I may occasionally email outside of work hours but I do not expect an answer by any means. Sometimes I'll write up the email but schedule it to send during work hours - I wish all email services offered this as it would make things a lot easier

Oluwafunmito Odefemi

I don't have an issue with people sending me messages after office hours. I work for a global organization and sometimes emails come in earlier or later for me.

I usually would not respond until my official work hours. For calls, I'd pick up and unless it's something absolutely an urgent task that affects a lot of other people, I make it clear I will work on it the following day.

I think it is up to managers particularly to respect their direct reports by not making requests outside of work hours and if they do, they should make sure they apologize for doing so,.

Jimmy Seddon

Great post @John Funk!

Every time I read these prompts I always have a gut reaction, followed by a more realistic answer once I have watched the episode.

Gut reaction: "If it's not related to work I see nothing wrong with it." To provide some context, I regularly have social friendships with many of my co-workers and getting a message to make plans for later that evening would not be unreasonable.

After listening to the episode (which was fantastic!) I have worked in two different environments and I think the company culture has a big influence on my answer to this question.

At a previous company, I couldn't use notification settings to tailor my availability and people at that company had zero respect for other people's personal time. I number of people were expected to be available at any time to answer questions or hop on to troubleshoot and resolve issues. Even if I set my status to "unavailable" I would be getting multiple messages from various communication methods to get my attention. Had I continued to work in that environment, I probably would have been 100% in the camp against messaging co-workers after hours.

However, at my current company, the culture is drastically different. Slack is the primary method of communication (outside of Confluence ) and your slack status is very much to be respected. That is baked into the culture. If something isn't urgent, people will add that to the start of the message and there is no expectation that you will get to something that arrives outside your working hours until the next day.

Conclusion: For a very long time I have worked very odd hours for the time zone I work in and I have done an excellent job of setting expectations with my co-workers and teammates that they may see updates form me before they start the day and I may leave before them. I think the fact that we have a globally distributed team makes it impossible for someone not to have to send messages outside someone's working hours and that as long as the company does a good job of empowering employees to set reasonable boundaries with their co-workers I don't see why that shouldn't be allowed. At the same time, this does put the onus on the individual to set those boundaries but I think this is the way things need to be since there isn't a one size fits all solution. Everyone has different things going on in their lives and needs flexibility to work around live commitments which means they need to be responsible for informing their co-workers when they can and cannot accept messages.

Peter Van de Voorde

Interesting topic you've chosen here @John Funk .

It relates nicely with my community article here: How I stopped worrying and Love the Silence.

All this depends on a number of things in my opinion:

Company culture: You can't be the only one not taking messages after hours , this needs to be a part of your company culture. Otherwise you'll simply be deemed a under performer. If you want to change this kind of behavior it needs to be company wide and it starts at the top.
How safe you feel in your position. I can speak from a position of privilege as I join a new company or a new team. Not everyone can. This is also why I don't think it's just on the receiver to set boundaries.
What's the impact of being full time online for work on your mental health and on your family life? As we've seen in the last 6 months: no job is safe, and a company will not hesitate to kick you out. Does a company then truly deserve everything you've got, leaving the scraps for the people that really care about you?

Here are some questions that I think can help with figuring out how to do this properly for your position and your team:

How do you work async in your team/company? Do you work in the same timezone or across different time zones? Do you have good ways of async communicating? Are your team members aware of your availability? Have clear expectations around replies been set?
What do you prefer? What do your team members prefer?And have these preferences been clearly communicated? It might be that you love being in the know all the time, it might be that you want to fully disconnect outside of 9-5. Both should be ok. But you need to plan for it.
Before accepting a position at a company: ask about their ways of working, communicate your preferences and see how they reply. It might not be a good fit.

I once declined a job offer at HP because it didn't align with how I saw my life. It was a great offer and would have been a massive step forward for my career. But it would ruin the balance I was looking for and it didn't align with my personal preferences. I do recognize that I had the privilege of being able to decline this offer without any serious consequences. If that doesn't apply to you right now: accept the offer but keep looking for the place that fits you best.

This became a much longer reply than expected

Amanda Mateo

It is ok, because as Kristin Lyons mentions create the email and schedule it, done and done. You get the email completed on your time and then schedule the email delivery and they will get it when they get in.

done and done.png

tsmith

Yes! I came here to say that. Sometimes I like to type up a message while it's fresh on my mind but just because I'm thinking about it doesn't mean I expect the recipient to worry about it outside of their working hours. So I really appreciate the Outlook "send later" functionality.

It's especially useful when working with international colleagues. I may legitimately be preparing a message during my work day but they've turned in for the night.

In a world where so many of us are glued to technology, it's understandable to have the urge to message at all hours. But I say try we should try to be considerate as the sender. It's hard enough to unplug and we shouldn't make it even more difficult for each other.

Collista Lewingdon

If we have an out of work relationship and it is not work related, I say that is okay.

But if we do not have an out of work relationship then I save after hours messages for super important things. Like if I am going to be out sick and need to let my team know. Other than that, I save it. I expect the same courtesy and everyone knows that I have that boundary. I get paid for 8 hours of work. I do 8 hours of work. They want more of my time, then they need to pay for it. After working in a few work environments were there were not healthy boundaries in place I realized that I had to set the expectation.

Matt Doar_tzgiej

Getting a phone that is work-only helped for me. If I'm not on-call, I don't carry it. The official phone number for me at work is that work cell phone. I've given my personal cell number to just a few team members in case I am really needed, and added them to my favorites list so there will be a ring tone for just them. The personal phone is set for silence otherwise. I really don't want any distractions.

On the other side, I do send Slack andTeams messages and emails at any time, and just hope that the recipients have set up their devices so it doesn't disturb them. I wouldn't send a text message or phone call outside work hours though, unless urgent.

Amanda Barber

Same thoughts here - I definitely have odd hours sometimes with kid schedules, etc. I really appreciate the option to schedule send my Slack or Gmail messages.

My boss knows me well enough by now to send messages and start with "For tomorrow" or "NOT TONIGHT" if she's sending them after hours. I really appreciate that she recognizes that working at night is a weakness of mine.

When working across time zones, it's hard to keep everyone's hours straight, so I think it's okay to send messages after hours, but make it clear that it's not an expectation that there's any sort of response (or reading of messages) outside of a person's working day.

Summer Hogan_q8imea

For me at my current company, I do not have to worry about this. I stick to my work hours and take my time away from work. My company respects my time and fosters an excellent work/life balance. If there is an emergency we have a paging system that will call you ask you to get online and join a teams meeting, but I have never been paged (yet). My immediate coworkers have my personal cell number and they know they can call me whenever they need to and I'll answer the call. I refuse to put MS Teams and Outlook on my personal phone and my company does not have a program where you can get a work phone.

I do create emails off hours quite often because if something is on my mind or I forgot to send something during the day, I will go in my home office and write it up and either save it as a draft and send it the next day or schedule it through outlook to send during the recipients office hours. I love that feature in Outlook! It is really helpful!

Taranjeet Singh

That's a great post as a special guest, @John Funk !

Personally, I am on the side that says that sending messages/emails/calls to your teammates after working hours should be discouraged, but it should be up to the receiver to really set up the boundaries and clear expectations to the senders.

With remote working environments, especially where geographically distributed teams are working together, this becomes more important to set your working hours and availability expectations (using tools like Calendars, Availability Status on messaging apps, etc.) to other teams and teammates. I also strongly agree that such a culture should be supported and promoted by the upper management of the organizations so that the employees do not feel a pressure to read & respond to such messages/emails as and when received.

I also believe that there are exceptions to every case because there can be some urgent work situations that need a response or collaboration before or after working hours, but those should really stay as exceptions and not get slowly converted to a habit or culture with time.

If this culture or habit is not stopped or continues for long, it starts impacting the work-life balance for employees and impacts their families as well. It may also have an impact on mental health of employees with time, especially those who have a fear of losing their job due to not acting or responding to such after-hours messages/emails.

Everybody has a life before or after working hours and a lot other things to take care of. So, companies and teammates should respect that and act accordingly to ensure that their as well as others' work-life balance is maintained.

Have a great Wednesday and rest of the week everyone!

LoRi_pbdhu4

My boundaries are really that i will not notice a message until i am back on the clock hours; it's not on my radar at all. However our team uses the general chat off hours sometimes as a way to share fun photos that are non-work related. I just see them come monday.

LoRi_pbdhu4

I agree, no MSTeams/Outlook on personal phones.

Benjamin_tmh9yg

Work with so many different time zones. Kind of difficult not too. However, don't expect to get a response till the next day or vice versa. Unless, the communication was planned for like a late night or early morning event.

Trudy P Claspill

I think it is okay to send messages outside of work hours to work-related communications channels, especially in environments where teammates and clients are scattered across time zones. How am I supposed to keep track of the timezone/work hours of all the people with whom I communicate?

If I want to communicate about non-work things with a colleague, I'll ask for their personal contact info and then use that only for non-work things.

I believe the receiver has to set their own boundaries about responding to the messages and set expectations about when they will respond. The expectations and responsibilities for being reachable need to be clearly defined for the job. This needs to be clearly communicated with their management, their teammates, their subordinates, and their clients. There are a variety of ways to reaffirm those boundaries through the Status option in Slack (or MS Teams equivalent) and automatic replies available in most email systems.

I think it is a great idea, as the sender of an after-hours message, to also state the priority of the message. I frequently prefix messages with "This can wait until you are next in the office..."

I've also always firmly believed that work applications have no place on a personal phone. If my employer expects me to have such apps on my phone, they can give me a phone or at the very least subsidize the expense of the phone. (I would, in fact, get a separate phone in that case.) And then, again, there would need to be a conversation about expectations for responses to messages sent outside of my normal work hours.

(Side note: At one of my previous employers I had a colleague that installed the company's mail app on their phone, but was not careful about making sure their personal contacts' info did not get stored in the company email app. When that person got laid off, while on vacation no less, the company reached out to claw-back the app from the person's phone and the person lost all their personal contacts.)

Huwen Arnone [Deiser/Devoteam]

⚡I think there is no debate here. Work happens during work hours. Any other interaction nonconsent outside that time slot can even be considered harassment (if it's a repetitive behavior). This will depend on the people involved and the type of work, of course.

Another person can send a text, slack, etc., during non-working hours, that's ok. What's not ok is to expect an immediate answer. The answer should be given until the next day. It also depends on the receiver to set the boundaries and block notifications during those non-working hours. It's simple.

🤘🏼I've had bad experiences on this topic, so there's no option for me. Work doesn't worth your mental health.

edwin vasquez_f9df79

Cant wait to check it out!

Andy Shaw_fbzydb

If I message someone after work hours, I wouldn't expect the person to respond as soon as possible. It is more of a way for me to kickstart some conversation or ask, before it slips my mind. The receiver can respond when it's the next workday or when they have the bandwidth (if the message is not an urgent request).

Rex_kdpmrf

I am known as the keeper of the work-life balance at work so this is a tough one for me. I always tell staff that they can load applications on their personal phone like, Slack (notifications off), in the event they cannot get into their computer or need a way to communicate to multiple people. I always set the expectation for them to use any applications at their discretion and comfort level. Zero expectation either way from me, but I do insist if they are doing anything that takes more than 5 minutes they clock-in or ask for an adjustment on their timecard.

LoRi_pbdhu4

seems completely reasonable!

Girijya Waldode

Until it's an urgent and essential issue, it's a big no to message your teammate after working hours.

Joanna Bajda

Same here, I'm working as consultant for companies around the world. I'm based in Europe, if I want to be in touch with people from US I need to communicate with them outside of my "working hours".

John Funk

Such good comments everyone. I will let your responses speak for themselves. Thanks for participating!

Markku Miettunen_zghw48

I never try to reach out a person I know to be OOO.

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