[lincolnq]

Employees not succeeding at disconnecting from work is often unintentional, and caused by subtle, pernicious effects of middle managers simply existing and following basic incentives (such as "my boss just sent me an email after dinner, guess I should act/forward it along").

Forcing companies to write down their policy on this seems like a pretty good idea, because it forces HR to actually decide how they want their employees to be treated, and enables middle managers to be held accountable for their actions along this axis.

[pottertheotter]

This sounds like the sort of thing a founder or executive would say to make themselves not seem like the bad guy and shift blame to “middle managers”. There’s a reason that in the world of fraud and auditing that “tone at the top” is such a big focus and not “tone at the middle”.

[ketzo]

You’ve never had a teammate who was just ALWAYS online on Slack? Or found yourself working on a weekend because you thought of a bug fix?

I agree that there’s a lot of blame-shifting that happens at work. But lots of people struggle to disconnect from work for non-malicious reasons, either their own or those of someone else.

[Karrot_Kream]

I don't think it's _not_ the fault of those at the top. Every level needs to be cognizant of the effects of "forward the comms" culture. Ultimately I think it should be the top that takes the responsibility. Unfortunately it seems like the law only mandates writing down the current culture, though hopefully it's the first step to challenging employers based on what they wrote down.

[tomrod]

Some of the most successful campaigns I've seen in this pace start at the top.

[mikro2nd]

How and why do you even know there's an email in your "work" inbox? Have your devices switch off notifications outside of work hours and you're done. If the sender asks why you didn't respond, explain politely that you didn't see any notification until work started.

eta: If you keep yourself on the hook, that's on you.

[andreilys]

If the sender asks why you didn't respond, explain politely that you didn't see any notification until work started.

Come review time you will be dinged for not being a "team player".

Meanwhile the employee that does quickly respond to these messages will get ahead and eventually become your boss.

TBH if something is important enough, I have no problem with responding to it "After work hours", whether it's on the weekend or after work. In the same way, I have no problem taking a long lunch or sleeping in because I know it's a push/pull relationship with work. This is of course much easier to do when you're permanently remote so YMMV

[CaptainZapp]

Or even simpler: Don't use your own device for work related stuff.

I can get work email on my device with appropriate software and configuration by my employer.

But why on earth should I ever do that?

[AlwaysRock]

I do some time sensitive work with clients. It's time sensitive because there are often hard deadlines or deadlines that are created and set 25-48 hours out. Clients are often in different time zones.

This is the first time in my career where I have had push notifications for work email on my phone. I don't love it. Mostly because while many of the emails are not time sensitive once I got in the habit of answering things when they come in instead of batching emails (what i've previously done) then every email seems more important and its easier to answer than to know I've got a non urgent email I need to answer at some point in the next 24-48 hours.

I write all of this to say... Not everyone can turn off work email after 5pm.

[mavelikara]

> "my boss just sent me an email after dinner, guess I should act/forward it along"

I can't understand why the person sending the email after dinner is off the hook, but the person forwarding it along is solely to be blamed in your eyes.

[jessecurry]

Most C-level folks that I’ve worked with in the past decade have told me that they send messages when they have time, which is often off hours, but they don’t expect a reply until business hours. I’ve heard very few middle managers say the same thing, so a late night message may be perceived differently. But that’s just my personal experience, obviously very situational.

[akudha]

This is all good. But the fact that we have reached a level where there needs to be a law for humans to treat other humans nicely - that is the sad part. Not emailing after work hours should be common sense and politeness, instead of needing a law, no?

[menzoic]

I think you're looking at this backwards which makes it look bad. The reality is, humans haven't been treating other humans nicely in labor relationships for tens of thousands of years. I don't think you'd be able to look back even a decade and say it was better than now, so rather than "reached a level" of inhumanity, I'd say we reached a new level of humane treatment with a law like this. Its just another step in the right direction after centuries of progress. Without laws this good behavior is left up to the culture of the leaders of a company. Its similar to how before child labor laws, some companies didn't use child labor. Now that theres a law for it, no company does (at least on the soil where then law is in effect) which causes the next generation to see this better state as the new normal.

[twobitshifter]

In the history of labor, this would rank as a minor infraction in terms humans failing to treat other humans fairly. The only way out of the mistreatment of employees has historically been enacting laws such as the fair labor standards act of 1938. Without that law we’d still have children working in mines and the 40-hour workweek wouldn’t exist.

[eru]

We don't _need_ a law. Politicians just want to be seen doing something, and people like to see them do something.

It's just more bureaucracy and fodder for the compliance department.

[baby]

My SO is an HR and the head of HR at her place calls her on her personal phone late in the evening all the time. Blows my mind that HR themselves can be inappropriate :D

But imo it’s both people fault: it’s also on you to set boundaries, not use email on your phone, etc.

[beckingz]

HR are often the worst offenders.

Sometimes they're great and actually invest in the humans at an organization, other times they are the worst humans at an organization.

[watwut]

The problem has nothing to do with email being sent at night. The problem is about expectation of quick response.

[IsThisYou]

> such as "my boss just sent me an email after dinner, guess I should act/forward it along").

Wait until 2 AM, then reply to your boss with a question about the email.

[teeray]

Mail servers should just be configured to stop delivery between 6p-8:30a of they’re really serious about it.

Have an escalation process in place if it’s that important to reach someone after hours.

[halpert]

Complaining middle managers seems so weird in this day and age. In the past, when people stayed at jobs for decades, it made sense to complain about annoyances at work like having ineffective middle managers. However, you shouldn’t be working at a job with ineffective management in today’s world, where it is common to change jobs. If you are, then that reflect more poorly on you than on the managers.