Combating E-Presenteeism.

Have you every recieved a message after work-hours when your slack has already gone offline and your email notification is on do not disturb but the message looked urgent and very important? What did you do in that moment?

I saw a reel a while ago where people were asked if they will respond to their manager's messages or emails if they were on leave, and the answers were variably interesting. I remembered someone vocally saying: "the reason why I am on leave is for me not to respond to messages, why do I have to?"

As a professional who has spent the last five years in Lead-roles, I totally can understand and relate with him. I remember going to the office on the 30th of December in one of my roles, and writing offer letters till six pm, on the 31st of December because we wanted the recruitment to wrap up before the year closed out as some talents were resuming on the first Tuesday of the following week (which was the new year).

On a lighter note, the offers were probably answers to some people's prayers, but when does this "a lot of work" become "too much of work" and what exactly is E-presenteeism?

E-Presenteeism refers to the tendency of employees to overwork, be constantly available, or engaged in work-related activities beyond their regular working hours, especially when working remotely. It is the subtle feeling of being obliged to respond to work related messages beyond work hours and feeling guilty for not doing so.

Please do note that this is different from Presenteeism-Presenteeism refers to the lost productivity that occurs when employees are not fully functioning in the workplace because of an illness, injury, or other condition. (Maybe I'd do an article on this later)

While E-presenteeism looks harmless at first glance; especially when you are working in a high pressure environment (like Startups or Investment banking), the repercussions might be detrimental to an individual and to the organisation as a whole if not curbed.

Below are a couple things or measures you can put in place to combat this almost un-noticed occurence.

• Create, Establish and Communicate Clear Boundaries: Of course, people know there should be boundaries, however continously establishing and communicating this boundary is very important. For instance, I remember sharing with some team-leads who enjoy sending message after work hours that- if they can't stop themselves from sending the messages, they can indiicate the level of urgency and let the recipient know that this is not a message that requires an urgent response. Doing automatically reduces the stress and anxiety on the recievers end. We later made this a company-wide rules such that people were not mandated to reply messages outside work hours except it was very important.
• Encourage Holiday requests: Let people know that they can go on holiday or take a leave if they are feeling overwhelmed. Do note that it is very important that this is driven by both the People/HR team, and the leaders/teamleads/managers. People might not want to go on leave if they don't see their managers doing so, especially in an high-context cultural clime like the Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Encourage flexi-time: While the role is remote (or hybrid), encouraging flexi-time might also reduce e-presenteeism. For instance, there are staff who prefer to work from 12:00 noon till eight or nine pm, while there are people who are early risers and prefer their days to start by eight am and wrap up by five pm. If the roles are not time-focused critical function roles, this might be an option worth exploring to encourage optimal productivity for different beings.

There are a lot more ways and a lot more ideas to implement but I will stop here, and hope to learn from you. Have you or your colleagues experienced E-presenteeism before? How did you combat it? Please share below.