"Don't read and reply to emails out of hours; you'll make yourself less credible"

[MaidofKent78]

Said by my husband this evening and it got me wondering: does it?

For context, I work 0.6FTE in a technical role within an NGO, not at a supervisory level. It's rare that emails come in on my days off that can't wait until I'm back in the office, and there's no expectation that I would respond.

Occasionally, I do read and reply out of hours, mainly because I enjoy my work and I'm interested in what's happening when I'm not there. But my husband's remark got me thinking....

So am I making myself less credible by doing this?

Do you make disparaging and sweeping statements to your husband about his working practices, OP? I suspect not.

In general, looking at this board, men seem to have very many opinions about what their female partners are doing when it's not something for them. Is it that our attention is sometimes elsewhere and not continuously on tending to their needs?

I work in Financial Services and the teams I work with are scattered across the globe so emails come in 24/7. Sometimes an urgent response is needed. Waiting until the next UK day could mean a whole day is lost effectively and this could have serious consequences. So in a senior role, you are expected to be contactable pretty much 24/7. Key people I'm working with always have my personal mobile so they can contact me anytime. Non-key people can wait for me to check my work phone/email.

What is not well regarded are those people who send meaningless reply-all emails (e.g. congratulating someone on a promotion etc) on a Sunday eve just to prove that they've logged in. That sort of behaviour does more damage than good to your career.

No, I don't think it makes you less credible. But equally people who reply quickly to every email sent out of hours look like they have no life!

Personally, I work 3dpw and have a team of people working for me full-time, plus clients who sometimes need a response that only I can provide. If I didn't sometimes respond on my days off, evenings or weekends then the work wouldn't all get done within the deadlines and it would almost certainly be decided that I couldn't do this role part-time. Or my lack of response for four days would leave my colleagues having to work extra hours just before deadlines because they were held up by needing a response from me. So being flexible enables me to have the flexibility to work 3dpw and, on my working days, to leave soon after 5 and catch up after the kids are in bed. However, I am on a very good salary. If I was in a low paid job I probably wouldn't feel the same, whereas some of my salary is essentially acknowledging that this isn't a 9-5 job.

Re scheduling emails, they normally appear in your inbox showing the time you scheduled them, but when you open them up they show the original time you sent them. So some people will notice, some won't.

In my industry (law) replying to emails out of hours is an absolutely expected part of the job.

That is part of why it's so hard to make the job work part time though in my experience. Clients and colleagues are used to 24/7 availability and it makes it really hard to enforce reasonable boundaries. You end up working a full time job on a part time salary.

I think the issue comes down to preserving your boundaries and establishing expectations though. I can't imagine how it would negatively effect your professional credibility.

Does your husband really have enough insight into your workplace to make sweeping pejorative statements about your working practices?

I work in HE and I email people when I think about it! It really is a job you can do at any time, so I take advantage of that. Everyone knows I don't work 9-5pm and neither do any of my colleagues. The only people I know who have those only work Tue/Thurs between 9-3pm things on their email are administrators with set tasks. I don't know any senior academics who have that- although I'd be happy if they did, I just wouldn't feel any pressure to follow suit. I don't need them to reply instantly, but I do need to get stuff off my chest when I've done it.

I do also get mega-urgent 'I need to submit this tomorrow' type things as well and am prepared to stay up late to get the work done. I do moan about the last-minute types, but again, it's that immense flexibility to take the afternoon off and work all evening/Sat/Sun that makes the job so great, so I don't ever hold it against them. Students we reply within 2 working days and they all know this as it's the university's standard response.

Sometimes it just makes your life easier to deal with some stuff out of hours. It's OK talking work life balance, down time etc... but means nothing if it causes you be be overloaded and stressed while at work cause you have made a rigid time bracket for yourself.
Credibility comes with getting the job done however you choose to do it.

I don't think it would make anyone less credible.
In truth, I wouldn't notice what time someone else sent their e-mail to me - it really isn't the focus of my work, to be keeping an eye on anyone else's timekeeping. I read what is in the e-mail, not the time it is sent. I mean, to my mind (having been at work and living as an adult LONG before e-mails were invented (or at least common practice), one of the advantages of an e-mail is exactly the fact that you don't have to be working at the same time as the other person.

If I am working late at night, it could well indicate that I have managed my time well, and had a long leisurely lunch or gone out for a walk in the afternoon or gone to the theatre or had my haircut or been to something with my dc. It is a bit of a jump to assume that working in the evening has to be a negative thing.

It absolutely depends on the culture, industry, situation, etc.

I think if you reply about trivial matters outside of office hours it can have the effect of appearing 'lower status', as if you feel it necessary to respond because you're someone else's bitch. There are obviously situations where the power balance might be really important here and ones where it's less so.

Responding on your days off/out of hours will also give people the expectation that you're available out of hours, which can be unhelpful if you'd rather not be disturbed - I once had a colleague have a mini-breakdown (just to me) as clients kept contacting her on her mat leave - they were only doing it because, despite her out of office reply, she kept bloody replying to their emails. So they kept sending them!

It also depends on the recipient - if my boss sends me some work overnight, I might reply 'sure, I'll get to that when I'm back in' to acknowledge it. I have clients who wouldn't appreciate a late email as it's really weird to them, and other clients who will email at 1am and call you if they haven't heard anything by 1.30am! So it really depends.

I don't generally sit there, specifically having a session replying to emails outside office hours.

But I do usually: check emails when I wake up, in case anything major has happened and to knock any easy ones off. Then I will usually check again about 6-7pm and do any mopping up. Neither would take more than 5 minutes. I wouldn't bother with the latter if I had worked late but if I leave off at 4 it's good to catch any later ones.

I usually do a check every couple of days on holiday as well, just to redirect things as required etc.

I send almost all my emails between 6pm and 2am - and am now self employed because of my preference for these weird hours.

At previous day jobs I've kept my emails only to the times I was physically at work, because almost all of them have had dreadful presenteeism and a tendency to expand into your home life unless you squashed it hard at the start (I've never been paid enough, or senior enough, to take day job work home with me).

I have a big ish job in the media and respond to emails round the clock and when I'm off.

It's how it is - the industry never sleeps - plus I love my job so am happy to.

Equally if I need to take my children to appointments or go to a school play or match on company time, that's fine too. I just keep checking my phone.

I hate jobsworths who don't reply outside of working hours just to prove a point.

people with serious responsibility are serious about it

If you’re a senior person one of your responsibilities (which you should be serious about) is protecting the welfare of your staff. Sending emails out of hours guilt trips your juniors into thinking they have to work well beyond contracted hours. I’d go so far as to say it is a form of bullying. I would wonder about the line management skills of someone who regularly behaved this way.

By all means draft your work email at 2am if you want, or on a Sunday afternoon. But then use the email timer system to send it at 8am, or Monday.

Sorry : what's HE stand for?

If I know there are important deadlines coming up I will reply. If nothing is planned or urgent I won’t. I use my judgement.

Nothing is definitely right or wrong. People are different. Some like to stay on top of things - others stick to working hours. As long as you get what you need to do done it’s fine.

My employer trusts me to get my job done as I see fit, and I therefore wfh a lot and keep odd hours.

So emails at night/dawn/weekends don't really bother me.

But email is asynchronous and not guaranteed immediately - it shouldn't be relied on for a genuinely urgent thing. Face to face or phone contact should be the primary method (with written follow up if necessary).

Ergo, no email by itself should ever be that life or death that someone feels compelled to check all the time.

Sorry : what's HE stand for?

Higher Education

By all means draft your work email at 2am if you want, or on a Sunday afternoon. But then use the email timer system to send it at 8am, or Monday.

......but then it might not come in, in the order things have happened. So it might not make sense if someone replied inbetween.

I work part time. I don't have my work phone turned on or my work laptop on constantly, but sometimes it suits me to do a bit of work on one of my non-working days or in the evening, so that I can not work for part of one of my 'working days'. It is called flexible working. I consider it to be a real 'plus' of my job.

Thanks, @BackforGood

I will respond during my working day; if I am working on planned out of hours work; if I am on-call and have been called. Otherwise, they can sod off. I tell off colleagues who answer mails when they're on leave, too, including my director. The work we do is 24/7, which is why there are people to cover it. If we have a major issue (like the weekend we had a whole datacentre failure,) management will ring round even if you're not on-call, so I don't feel any obligation to be more available than I already am.

In general, looking at this board, men seem to have very many opinions about what their female partners are doing when it's not something forthem. Is it that our attention is sometimes elsewhere and not continuously on tending to their needs?

I think MN shows that women feel like this too when it comes to their partners workinging out of office hours. Women are posting all the time about how they dont like how their partners work.

And usually, its met with 'he might be having an affair' for the crime of being on a phone outside core office hours.

I hate jobsworths who don't reply outside of working hours just to prove a point
This sort of attitude is exactly why some workplaces and bosses want to set clear boundaries, so their employees don't feel pressured to be on call 24/7 when some of their colleagues consider that them having a home life outside of work makes them a jobsworth.

We had the same at a former school where some parents/students felt it was acceptable to leave homework until the night before it's due and then message staff on the homework system asking for help. If staff didn't reply to their child then the parent would complain if a detention was issued because "my child asked for help and you didn't provide it". It had to be pointed out quite clearly that an online message 10pm the day before homework is due is not appropriate and this had already been communicated. What was worse was that some staff undermined everyone else by replying on the homework platform 24/7.

I agree with him. You teach people how to treat you. If you constantly reply to emails out of hours people will the EXPECT you to reply out of hours and it will become a habit. If, on the other hand, you never do- they will learn X strictly keeps to work times so no point emailing with a query at 11pm.

I hate jobsworths who don't reply outside of working hours just to prove a point

I hate managers who expect employees to never have time off and to be on call 24/7. I'm not on call. I deserve time off. If people dont have down time, they'll get burnt out and ill and then they'll be off for longer. This is a false economy and the consequences will be an unhappy workforce.
I would have thought this made obvious business sense lol

So, I could not work out how to schedule an email using the outlook app on my phone.

Shall ask around today.

From the Outlook 360 application on my laptop, the email sat in my outbox overnight and went out as scheduled at 7am. If my laptop had not been connected to power/online, it would have gone out only when next connected.

[answering the question 'do you want to send' uptnread]

HTH

If you're not saving lives, and it's not your own business, then don't even look at your email out of hours.
I don't know about "credible"(why would your husband even question your work credibility?) but it's better to separate your work and your life.
It's all well and good for people with "big jobs in the media" to sneer about Jobsworths but most of us are not paid enough to work OOH.