Setting boundaries on time when you're senior and expected to work long hours...

[Wonderbug81]

Having looked back at a few posts on here about senior workload, it seems generally accepted that most people have to do at least a few additional hours, if not up to 20 or 30 beyond the contract for some types of roles.

I have a very busy senior role where it's expected that we do extra hours. I usually do about 50-55 hours a week. It could easily be closer to 65 hours to keep on top of workload but I just can't manage that so I accept some things will always be behind. My boss is really happy with my work but would love it if I could do more!

Looking for tips or advice for those of you who do work longer hours but who have managed to put some boundaries in place (with the company/boss/team etc) so it doesn't get out of control!

Thanks

how much do they pay you

I have recently built in an hour of desk time as a ‘must do’ to my calendar, and while it does often have to move and sometimes just can’t happen that day, it generally means I get at least half an hour a day (between 9-6) for urgent work, rather than it all being pushed to late evening or early mornings because I’ve been in meetings all day. It’s definitely helped.

Depending on your working pattern, you might want to arrange it differently - but the principle of controlling your diary to get the time you need to do the actual work, rather than being controlled by others demands for meetings, still stands.

Thank you, yes I think you did reply. Trying to set the boundaries until I've done a year in the role (easier to explain but also hoping the market improves as it's v quiet now).

I was saying on another reply that I do need to delegate more but actually my team are already setting boundaries which mean I end up taking on more! Plus they are relatively junior and need more support. That coupled with a perfectionist boss who also has a boss who expects everything done yesterday means it's me who picks up the slack.

The more replies I read and reply to here, the more I think I have to accept that something will have to give, even if that means my boss is 'less pleased with me'.

I'm a top 5% of the country earner (London) and I'm a Director with 8 reports. It's interesting because I do wonder if I've made a bit of a rod for my own back, I haven't completed a year but was worried about passing my probation and making a good impression so went out of my way to get things done.

That said, the culture throughout the company at my level and above is to be always on and contactable, even on holiday.

That's the culture at my company as well. I just didn't confirm when I joined and I've found others have followed. I still passed my probation. My boss answers emails while on holiday but that doesn't mean I'm going to. My work phone stays in my study.

Helpful to know, thank you. I work in a competitive industry and city, so I just haven't felt able to push back as much (also 9 months in the role and did want to make a good impression but it's making things harder now as there's an expectation).

That said the culture is long hours, always on etc. Have you managed to set boundaries under these circumstances or should I just move on??

It's no wonder so many senior people go part-time, if they can.

Thank you. Glad you're both making it work.

Replying out of hours is tricky as we manage some projects that do need urgent attention if they go wrong (public facing). That said I have been responding to everything, rather than just the urgent stuff, that comes through out of hours so need to change that for sure!

To be honest, at 9 months in you may have already made too much of a rod for your own back. I'd be looking at moving on.

I've always made sure to ask during the recruitment process what their attitude is towards a work life balance. Of course,they always say good things, which I then remind them of when they start trying to pile on work.

I also always require a work phone. Contact is through that, and it is ignored out of contracted hours. I only allow contact via my own phone in a genuine emergency (I'm CTO so cloud server outages, that sort of thing. Anything that results in downtime). If it's not a genuine emergency, they get read the riot act and the threat that I'll start ignoring my personal phone.

It works most of the time.

I'm curious, how are you receiving these Teams messages late in the evening? I guess/hope you don't sit at home with your laptop open. So you may be seeing them on a phone? Is that your phone, and your account, of the company's phone and the company's account?

The reason I ask is that to have company Teams/email on a phone, the company usually installs InTune, which is a way the company can then control what you can and can't do with your phone, e.g. copy/paste text from email into another app such as Translate.

I took the view that I wasn't going to let my company have any control at all over my £1000+ iPhone if they weren't going to pay for it, so the result is that I don't have any company accounts on my phone. When I leave the office, I'm out of contact until the next day. If it's really urgent, a few people might contact my personal WhatsApp. I'm in senior roles - Finance Director in one place, Country Manager in another.

Thank you. I totally agree that it's wrong. Based on a couple of other threads I've found on MN, the hours do generally seem to be the norm, rightly or wrongly.

My team is inexperienced but part of the reason I want to set boundaries is so that I have more time to train them. The challenge is that my perfectionist boss is expecting everything done to a particular standard that the team can't deliver without the support from me (or by doing it myself to meet unrealistic deadlines).

Definitely needs a mix of things from me: more pushing back, more dropping lesser things, more time with the team to make them more self sufficient.

Great to hear that it can be done and thank you for the advice. Out of interest, what kind of culture does your company have? Are other people also pushing back? How is it viewed in terms of things like progression?

I was made redundant a while back and am trying to make up for lost time in terms of where I should be by now in my career, which probably isn't helping matters!

I am in a very similar role and position as far as the hours go.

Working from home has been a a game changer as although I am "on" for work, I can do some chores whilst on calls or in my breaks. I can also work out instead of the pointless commute. Is this an option for you?

Thank you! It's not me promising unrealistic deadline so much as my boss is, as her boss in turn expects everything done yesterday.

I already have 121s and largely speaking they are our main conversations. We unfortunately can't, with the current culture, wait for it to become correct when everyone wants it done quickly and very well. That's only possible with more involvement from me as far as I can see.

Yes the squeezed middle very much resonates. Clearly this isn't sustainable and something has to give.

I'll try doing more to push back and to set firmer boundaries. That at least gives me time to set the team up and delegate more as well.

It's a little tricky as some of our work is public facing and does require quick action. I don't have notifications on my phone, I check messages once or twice in the evening to have semblance of control.

That said some messages definitely aren't urgent so as you and others have said, I need to make sure they are held until the following day.

The worries always that setting firm boundaries will make boss “less pleased with me” though of course, in real
life people whose time is carefully guarded and who do really great work on prioritised tasks tend actually to be valued higher than those always available.

beware of keeping yourself busy to feel that you are delivering value at the expense of your strategic vision and leadership.

Thank you... I do this already. 😁There's just far too much to squeeze into the short periods I have (definitely too many meetings).

Fridays used to be quite good for catching up when I joined but it's just got progressively busier to the point that there are a lot of meetings on Friday now too.

I really hope that if I can push back on certain projects, that will free up more time for actual thinking/working.

Stop replying to anything non urgent in the evening. If you're that public facing and important, there will be more than just you to pick up the slack if something mega goes off. They'd replace you tomorrow, remember that.

You've had loads of good advice here too, given me food for thought too.

I've done a very senior role and I made myself available 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday and I worked weekends when it benefited me or when there was something genuinely urgent. People respected it.. they did email me outside those hours which is fine. I worked incredibly hard in those hours but I also only did what was within my scope. As I got stuff done, people were always keen for me to get involved in wider stuff - you've got to be really strong as before you know it, you're doing everything.

So there are various things that I have done around this:

1. No notifications on your phone - I'm glad you've already done this.
2. If there are things that require us to deal with things out of hours, we usually arrange a rota for email/teams checking and then can text other team members if required.
3. If we're in a particular crunch time, I do turn notifications on but mainly for my own benefit (because otherwise I would just be thinking about it all the time and this way I at least know if I haven't had a notification that nothing has happened.
4. An agreement that we'll text each other if we need each other so people aren't constantly checking messages.
5. Sifting and prioritisation meetings - ideally with your team and then with your boss. So we use Microsoft planner for this, and basically dump into it everyone's to do lists. We then work out which jobs can only be done by one person, which can be done by multiple. What's urgent, what's important. Agree priorities for the week/month and what we think we should deprioritise. Take that up to my boss and she can either agree or disagree.

I think for me the key thing is getting people used to the idea that in an emergency/in peak periods, I don't mind putting the hours in. But on a day to day basis, that's not something I'm up for. And then getting higher ups to realise that if they employ one human, they can only get one human's worth of work out of me. I certainly do 50-60 hour weeks from time to time but it's not all the time.

I also shifted to a compressed week over 4 days as I find it's a lot easier to not be in for a while day than to reliably not work beyond 5 every day. I still build up excess hours but it's at a waaaay slower rate. I still log off at 4 or whatever without guilt if necessary as it all works out in the end - and keep a timesheet so I know that that's the case as otherwise I would send myself mad worrying.

I always make to very clear before I start a role that I work effectively not constantly. And that I expect others to do the same. I don't respond to emails after a certain time in the day (depending on what I'm doing) and not on weekends. I have very clear boundaries about my work/life balance. I always have. This came from having an amazing boss years ago who took her own work ethos from someone who is known as a bit of a genius in my industry. He decided the hours in the day that he was available to anyone and did not diverge. But he also worked really well during those hours. She was quite evangelical about this work style and it suited me. So I do the same. I'm known for an excellent work ethic and yet I do not ever work on holiday. I'll work evenings or weekends if I need to and will happily get things done until midnight for serious issues but I then take back my hours the next day or very quickly.

I remember going for a job interview abroad years ago. It was between me and a very hustling American guy. We went for dinner the second night and he said to the boss "I'll work 24/7, I'll be there whenever you need me etc etc" and I just looked at the boss and said "I don't work like that. I work really effectively and you'll never need to complain about my work or what I do but I value my family over work." I got the job and he didn't. She said she appreciated my honesty. And that was leading a team of 25 people.

I also find that empowering a team to work like this and work well seems to really benefit everyone. If anyone takes the piss it gets sorted very quickly.

WFH is so great and would make a big difference to me as I have a long commute (which I end up working on)!

Unfortunately everyone is required be in 4 days a week...

@Wonderbug81 I have worked at Director level since the early 1990s, so I am the raddled old bat you need to get past in order to speak to them. I can tell you now, my director would be so upset to read any of this, in fact looking back, I can tell you that any of the very senior people I have supported at blue chip companies would not be happy knowing you are working at this rate. Part of my role is to keep a check up on urgent stuff that comes in over the weekends, so I see who is working at times when they should not be and they will either get a cheery, "What are you doing working?" or my boss will be told to keep an eye on them lest they burn out.

For some reason, it is always middle managers who think that they must work silly hours to be noticed, whereas in truth, it is about the quality of their work when they are working. Please stop doing the silly hours, we would be more impressed if you said, "I have a work / life balance, I get my work done efficiently during my contracted hours, if there is an emergency, I will drop everything, but other than that my family are just as important as work and I am pleased that you support me doing that."

Please do not burn yourself out for a job, another person will be found for work, but your family do not deserve to miss you when they are growing up.

Part of being an effective leader is modelling the behaviour you’d want from your team back up the chain. If a deadline is unrealistic or unreasonable you need to call it out. It’s then on your boss to have that conversation with theirs and between you all workout a plan. Meeting unreasonable targets by working yourself to the bone is not good for anyone. Sometimes you do have to go beyond what you’d like but that should be the odd occasion, not regularly. People need down time to be effective employees, stressed people don’t do the best work. There are some really good bits on LinkedIn learning about leadership and preventing burnout.

OP, I know you're thinking about moving on from what you said on your other thread. Don't stress too much if you're looking for temporary solutions.

In my experience, a team that needs training needs exactly that: training. Send them on courses. Identify training needs, get budget approved, off they go. I appreciate some of the training will have to come from you, but not all of it. Get rid of everything you can.

Secondly, your boss must have figured out by now you're a perfectionist too. And a bit of a people pleaser, plus of course you care a lot and you were in your probationary period. A deadly mix allowing your time to be abused. Nothing is going to happen if you manage differently. They'll have to get used to it and if they ever ask, simply state you have identified priorities after being within the business for long enough, here is progress on those, here are the training initiatives you've implemented to assist your team further, etc., etc., show the long term investment in the business and workforce. You can also suggest some things are dealt with by email or combine them into a single meeting, send out a clear agenda. Be proactive to fend off time wasters. Seek to improve your own efficiency - any tools you can use to make your life easier? The better system you have, the easier the life for you.
Stop replying outside of working hours.