Stop Enabling a Culture of Overwork

If you’re not careful, flexible work can blur the boundary between your employees’ personal and professional lives, leading to a culture of overwork. If your organization needs to make a change, you can follow a three-step plan.

Start by assessing the level of overwork in your organization. Conduct interviews and surveys to identify how deeply overwork is entrenched in your culture and, crucially, what are the key drivers, which could be at the organizational level, the job level, or the personal level. This will give you more information about dysfunctions you may not have been aware of in the organization.

Then create a plan for incremental change. Once you understand where the culture of overwork is coming from, you can make targeted efforts to combat it. For example, perhaps you create a trial period in which communications are limited to traditional work hours. Start small and keep it simple.

Run the trial. Once you have a plan in place, treat it like an experiment. Communicate it clearly —and seek input from your employees before, during, and after the trial period. Make sure you’re listening and responding to their concerns.