Your Late-Night Emails Are Driving Your Employees Crazy
How to manage your emails for a happier team.
As a manager, you’re busy. You have endless meetings, family responsibilities, and an urgent to-do list. You do what you can, when you can. Email is something you fit in when you have time, whether that’s in between meetings or catching up before bed. It feels good to check it off your list, and it’s better to respond sooner than later.
Except, emails outside of work hours are driving your employees crazy. Even if there is no explicit expectation of a quick response, they want to be good team members, which means pausing while unwinding or spending time with their families to address the email.
But it’s just an email, you’re probably thinking. A quick ask, no big deal. But an email is never just an email. Aside from the cost of context switching, an email requires engagement. You wouldn’t be sending it to them in the first place if they didn’t need to take action in some way, even if it’s just reading thoughtfully. It might not be time-consuming, but it is stressful and can lead to burnout over time.
Email was a game-changer, yes. But productivity tools are a double-edged sword. As email moved from desktops at internet cafes to inside your pocket literally anywhere, we’ve never been able to work…
