'Detached' time off — the secret to workplace well-being

ENFORCING work-life boundaries is good for employee morale and productivity. Managers say that's what they want - but often don't act accordingly.

- JARED LINDZON

Workers who take small steps to enforce work-life balance, like setting an out-of-office message on weekends or not answering emails while on holiday, are often considered less committed and promotable - even when they're encouraged to take those actions.

Researchers behind a new study looking at this phenomenon are calling it the "detachment paradox".

"We were only looking at stuff that happens when the worker is not supposed to work, such as evenings, weekends and vacations," says Elisa Solinas, an assistant professor of marketing at IE University in Spain and one of the paper's coauthors. "What we see is that the more the worker detaches, the more harshly they get evaluated."

Value and punish

The researchers split managers into two groups and gave each the same fictitious story about a hypothetical employee. However, for one of the groups, the protagonist in the story took a small action to detach from work during their off-hours.

The results were revealing. Managers perceived the employee who enforced some relatively minor work-life boundaries as more focused, less stressed out and less likely to experience burnout. However, they also perceived that employee as less dedicated to work.

"The same people who said that employees are going to be more productive, also said they were going to be less promotable," says coauthor Eva Buechel, an assistant professor of marketing at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "So even the people who say that this is really important and encourage work-life balance, penalise workers for detaching."