What do you do if your colleagues are encroaching on your work-life balance?

If colleagues are encroaching on your work-life balance, set clear boundaries by communicating your availability and limits. Politely decline non-urgent requests outside work hours. Delegate tasks when possible and prioritize self-care. If the issue persists, discuss it with your colleagues or supervisor, emphasizing the importance of balance for productivity and well-being. Establishing boundaries preserves both personal and professional integrity.

The nature of business may require professionals to work outside of normal business hours and people may need help in extreme circumstances to call/include you. When it is one off, that is not interfering with your overall work life balance which is fine. If someone is constantly doing it and preventing you to disconnect from work, it is time to address it and ask for change in behaviour. Addressing the root causes and finding ways for people not doing it is the best way to avoid it.

If you find yourself constantly breaching the personal boundary due to overwork or by being pushed by colleagues, it's time to evaluate. Remote work has pushed this beyond limit. The other thing that affects heavily is geo-distributed teams, working across time zones. When personal life gets negatively affected, you need to reassess. Identify the source of the problem, are there expectations on response when someone sends a message after hours or is anybody waiting for your reply to get unblocked. By doing this assessments you'll be able to better understand the cause and formulate a solution that addresses them.

Too much stress throughout the day if impacts your personal life, it will have negative effects on your productivity. Catch and assess such situations at the earliest. Once you have done a self evaluation of the cause, trying gathering information from others to understand their perspective. As they say, most of the time our own thoughts cause the most damage. You'll be surprised to see how many times, people are not expecting you to reply beyond normal hours, it's your urge to get the unread number down to zero. Having open conversations will help you clearly understand the need. Also to set a proper team culture that respects and fosters time off of work.

I often found value in having a user guide. A user guide is a document that is easily available to others when they're contacting you. The goal of this document is to highlight your working hours, preferred mode of communication etc. Having auto reply, up to date calendar that reflects your expected work hours are always very helpful. Setting this as a team culture will help facilitate collaborations without breaching someone's boundary. One thing that helped me personally was, I used to set an expectations that even if I'm sending you a message after hours, you don't need to respond immediately. Setting such tone, not just for yourself but for your team can be helpful to build the respect for others' boundaries.

The best way is accepting what is being asked and promising the help within next available working hours. Stressing your working hours and still being open to help will give the message directly in professional manner.

Take advantage of tools like email filters, scheduling apps, or status updates to manage communications and set boundaries more effectively. Use out-of-office notifications or do not disturb status to communicate your status effectively.

If colleagues are encroaching on your work-life balance, it's essential to address the issue respectfully and assertively. Here are steps you can take: Set Boundaries, Prioritize Tasks, Delegate When Possible, Communicate Expectations, Use Technology Wisely, Address Issues Directly, Seek Support, Practice Self-Care. By taking proactive steps to set boundaries, communicate effectively, and seek support when needed, you can better manage colleagues encroaching on your work-life balance while maintaining productivity and well-being.

People encroaching others work life balance generally lacks skills in planning and prioritizing. Offering them tools/workshops to improve themselves could be a good approach to help them.