Whilst taking my sabbatical (planned out to disconnect and recharge,) I spent Sunday morning breakfast in my hotel room and reading the paper. This article in The Sunday Times jumped out at me, it was about who were left with iPhone tan lines because they fell asleep with their iPhones on their stomachs whilst they had been checking their work emails etc.

I had taken time to completely not check work email, to delegate tasks to others and to completely disconnect. Whereas in countries like France and Italy, the right to disconnect is enshrined in law, we do not have that here. The Irish government is bringing this in, but we need to create a new working culture where we can disconnect.

The pandemic made people connect in different ways and people that weren’t used to being online all the time, took those steps. I noticed working with clients that so many of their bosses were not respecting any of those boundaries between work and home, and so messages were coming in late at night or in the early hours. There was an underlying, implied agreement that they would be present to answer every single one of these messages.

What’s been created as a result, is the perfect storm for burnout and issues with long-term mental well-being, well, we have a crisis looming already with the potential of a recession, less staff available and increased workloads.

If you wish to protect your staff, then supporting them with ways of switching off, disconnecting and changing those unwritten, unspoken rules about presenteeism and truly allowing people to disconnect will be how you support your staff now and in the future.