Are You Accidentally Creating an Always-On Culture? A Leader’s Guide to Burnout Prevention

You send an email at 9:47 p.m. because it is finally quiet enough to think. You are clearing your inbox, getting ahead of tomorrow, or catching up after a day spent supporting everyone else.

You do not expect an answer tonight. But does your team know that?

You expect that they “should” know because you’ve never asked them to respond after hours.

For an employee, a late message from their leader can raise questions: Are they expecting a response? Will waiting look like I am not committed? Is this what getting ahead here requires?

Then there is the concerned employee, worried about their leader working late and the anxiety prompts them to respond, just to be helpful. This of course is balanced with other staff that will be irritated because it feels invasive and encroaches on their personal life. Over time, resentment often grows even if they do nothing in the moment.

You weren’t trying to negatively impact or stress out your team members. Your intention was simply to get something off your plate. It makes sense.

Good intentions can still create pressure

An always-on culture can develop without anyone setting out to create one.

The issue is not simply the minutes someone spends replying. A message can pull their attention back to work long after the reply is sent. Employees may begin anticipating the next request, checking repeatedly, or mentally preparing for tomorrow instead of being present at home. As a mental health speaker, I refer to this as, “when your Monday owns your Sunday”. As a leader, you might be very familiar with this on your own the weekends. (I credit the musician Chris Trapper for this reference).

Leaders are often carrying significant pressure themselves. Limited resources, competing priorities, and expectations from above while trying to remain available to your team. Working in the evening may also be a deliberate choice that fits your personal schedule. Maybe you face the same pressure because your peers all work in the evening. An unspoken culture in your organization.

Yet leadership comes with influence. Employees learn what is expected through what you do, what you praise, and what happens when someone sets a boundary. Does your leadership team joke about the work habits of millennials or gen Zs?

When you answer messages on vacation, celebrate someone for being “always available,” or routinely send requests outside working hours, employees may interpret constant connection as the price of being seen as dependable, invested and “true leadership quality”.

I regularly meet well-intentioned leaders that have been so deep in the work and culture that they haven’t noticed the impact of their work style on their team. Although they worry about the potential for frontline employee burnout and have witnessed the signs already. Coupled with feeling their own pace is “unsustainable”, an all-too-common feeling for leaders.

The hidden cost of staying connected and how to shift

Burnout is currently one of the top organizational concerns. For companies, absences and departures can mean recruitment, onboarding, lost knowledge, and additional pressure on the employees who remain. Behind those operational costs are people whose health, relationships, and confidence may be affected. Burnout is costly.

Leader awareness is a good start. Once you recognize the pattern, see if you can move to curiosity. Does your practice need to change? Perhaps for your own burnout prevention, it does. Or for the sake of your team, start by asking yourself the question, do I need to communicate something to my team so that I’m not creating unnecessary stress, anxiety, potential for resentment or risk for staff turnover?

From a psychological health and safety perspective, an important next question is whether employees feel able to step away without guilt or fear of consequences. As you likely know, time off offers less opportunity for recovery when people feel they need to be on standby. I once had a client with chronic health conditions. He had done the on-call shift for his team for 7 years. Just him. A nice guy, the chosen one because he was the only single guy on the team and he never felt he could say “no”.

Five ways leaders can change the “always-on” culture:

1. Make response expectations explicit

Do not assume your team understands the difference between when you send a message and when you need an answer.

Try: “I sometimes work at different hours. Unless you are scheduled to be on call, I do not expect you to monitor or respond to routine messages outside your working hours.”

Then make sure deadlines and follow-up actions support this statement.

2. Change delivery habits, not just email signatures

A “no response expected” footer can help, but repeated notifications can still interrupt people. Even better to use scheduled send for routine messages so they arrive during the recipient’s working hours.

For teams across time zones or flexible schedules, this can be tricky. It helps to agree on how asynchronous communication will work. If work genuinely requires after-hours coverage, clarify who is responsible, when they are available, and how others can disconnect.

3. Define what counts as urgent

“Urgent” should mean more than “I have important information to share,” or “this will need to be worked on tomorrow.”

Agree on the situations that require contact outside scheduled hours, the channel to use, and the person assigned to respond. A genuine operational emergency needs a different process from a question about an upcoming meeting.

When everything is unintentionally treated as urgent, employees have little guidance about what can safely wait.

4. Address the workload behind the habit

If your team regularly works evenings to keep up, telling them to set better boundaries will not resolve the underlying problem.

Ask: “What cannot realistically fit into your working day? What should we stop, postpone, simplify, or reassign?”

When a new priority arrives, identify what moves down the list. Where demands exceed your authority or resources, raise that gap with senior leadership. Clear leadership and expectations coupled with workload management is a game-changing for burnout prevention.

5. Make recovery both visible and safe

Take your breaks. Protect vacation time.

As I say to leadership teams, you may have inadvertently been mentoring burnout and employees are good students. They catch on and will mimic what you do on workdays and during holiday time. Arrange coverage rather than relying on people to check in while away.

Notice what you reward, praise and what earns your approval. Recognize sound judgement, collaboration, and meaningful results over being constantly reachable.

Ask employees privately: “Do you feel comfortable disconnecting after work? What do I do that makes that harder?” Listen without defending your intentions and follow through on what you learn.

Start with awareness, follow with action – an exercise for leaders

For one week, notice when you send messages, what you call urgent, and whether your own time off is actual time away. Compare the expectations you state with the habits your team sees.

If you recognize a mismatch, name it and say what you are trying to change. For instance, “I realize my after-hours messages may have created pressure to stay connected. That was not my intention, but I understand the impact could be different. I am changing how I send routine messages, and I want us to clarify what can wait.”

You do not need to be a perfect example of balance. You do need to make it credible that employees can do good work, meet clear expectations, and step away.

Your team is learning what commitment looks like from you. I hope for both you and your team, that you can move the needle on making recovery part of how employees do their best work.

Shannon Gander, BPE, CAC, CM, is a mental health speaker and resilience speaker and counsellor. Her keynotes and workshops help leaders and teams explore stress, burnout prevention, psychological safety, and the everyday habits that shape workplace culture. To learn more about her work and how she may be able to support you, your organization, or your conference, get in touch with her here.