Where Do You Draw the Line?

When workplace boundaries aren’t quite so clear

A couple years ago, we wrote about the importance of setting boundaries at work. The advice was straightforward: communicate your availability, learn to say no when necessary, protect your personal time, and make room to disconnect.

All still good advice.

But there’s another side to the conversation. Employees can establish boundaries, but whether they can maintain them often depends on the people around them as well as their own ability to honor the limits they’ve set.

Mixed Messages

Imagine an employee who has made it clear that evenings are family time. Then the boss sends an email at 9:00 p.m.

The manager may have no expectation of an immediate response. Perhaps that’s simply when they catch up on email. But if the employee responds, what message does that send? A boundary has been established, yet the employee’s actions suggest it may be flexible.

The same thing happens with vacations. An employee tells everyone they plan to disconnect, yet still checks email, answers questions, or joins a quick call while away.

Maybe the workplace expects it, or the employee assumes it does. Perhaps the employee simply has a hard time stepping away. Whatever the reason, repeatedly making exceptions can change what others believe the boundary actually is.

Boundaries Need More Than Permission

Managers have a role here, too.

It’s easy for a manager to say, “I want you to disconnect when you’re on vacation.” It’s more meaningful when the manager doesn’t contact the employee while they’re away.

Likewise, telling employees to speak up when they’re overwhelmed doesn’t accomplish much if saying, “I’m at capacity,” is routinely followed by another assignment.

Employees pay attention to what actually happens. If maintaining a boundary leads to questions about commitment, missed opportunities, or pressure to make an exception, the message becomes clear: the boundary may be acceptable in theory, but not necessarily in practice.

That doesn’t mean managers need to accommodate every preference or request. Work still needs to get done, and circumstances will occasionally require flexibility. The key is whether the exception remains an exception or quietly becomes the expectation.

When We Cross Our Own Boundaries

The workplace isn’t always responsible for crossing the line.

Many of us have become accustomed to being available. We check email while waiting for dinner. We respond to a message on Saturday because it will “only take a minute.” We glance at our phones during vacation just to make sure nothing important is happening.

Nobody asked us to.

We may do it because we feel responsible or don’t want colleagues to be inconvenienced. And if we’re being truthful with ourselves, it can also feel good to be needed.

Over time, though, the boundary we said mattered becomes one we routinely ignore. Once we’ve established that we’re available, other people naturally begin to believe that we are.

Who Owns the Boundary?

Perhaps that’s the part of the workplace boundary conversation we don’t discuss enough.

Employees need to communicate their boundaries and, when reasonable, maintain them. Managers need to make sure their expectations don’t undermine those boundaries. Both need to recognize that flexibility occasionally works in both directions.

A healthy boundary isn’t a wall between work and everything else. It’s an understanding of where the lines generally are and what circumstances justify crossing them. For example, an unexpected emergency may warrant an after-hours call or interrupt a day off.

Technology has made it possible for many of us to work almost anywhere and at almost any time. But the ability to reach someone doesn’t automatically mean we should.

Setting a boundary is one thing. Maintaining it, whether it’s someone else’s or our own, is another.