Your boss sends an email at 5:00 AM, your teammate pings you on Slack at 10:00 PM, and your co-worker is firing off emails from a beachside cabana on vacation. Problematic? Maybe not. For many workers, the real problem isn’t the timing—it’s the pressure. Must you match their availability?
Seventy-one percent of employees say they don’t mind getting emails or messages outside of work hours as long as they don’t feel pressured to respond immediately. That’s according to the Motives Met Work-Life Harmony Report, which surveyed 1,600 full-time working adults across the U.S.
What’s clear is that workers are struggling to harmonize work and life, which is why some states are proposing “Right to Disconnect” legislation. These laws aim to give employees the right to turn off work-related communications during non-working hours. One such proposal, Assembly Bill 4852, is currently being debated in New Jersey but has faced strong opposition from groups like the Garden State Council and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). California tried passing a similar law last spring, but the bill was defeated.
Right to Disconnect may sound good on paper but its effectiveness is questionable. Sweeping regulations like these often miss the nuances of individual work styles and fail to address the root causes of overwork and burnout. In fact, 73% of employees agree that these laws don’t address the underlying pressures that lead to poor work-life harmony, according to the Work-Life Harmony Report.
So, what does work?
Equitable Communication is Key for Integration & Separation
When it comes to protecting personal time, most employees prefer clear communication guidelines over legal mandates. Case in point: 58% prefer clear guidelines that focus on flexibility to communicate at each person’s preferred times but without the pressure or expectation to respond. Less than one-third (29%) prefer legal standards in place that give the right to disconnect from work communications during non-working hours. Thirteen percent prefer neither.
Rather than rigid rules, guidelines created collectively (rather than from the top down) can accommodate both work-life styles of integrators and separators. These two groups are defined as follows:
- Separators thrive with a clean “start” and “stop” time in their workday. They do best when they keep their work life and personal life in separate spheres. Separators tend to work best on a routine schedule. They prefer to leave work at work and want to feel they can opt out of checking and responding to emails and notifications before or after hours.
- Integrators feel confined by rigidity and do their best when they blend the boundaries between work and home. Integration may look like starting the workday early, taking a few hours off in the afternoon to tend to personal matters, and catching up on emails in the evening.
Research found 35% of workers categorized themselves as integrators, 26% as separators, and 39% fall on the spectrum between the two.
Beyond equitable communication, there are six research-based pillars to lend themselves to achieving work-life harmony. Let’s take a look.
The Six Pillars for Achieving Greater Work-Life Harmony
1. Inclusive Communication Norms
“Inclusive” is the key word here as some employees might prefer, for example, to respond to a few emails over the weekend or later in the evening while others don’t. Some may feel more relaxed periodically checking emails on vacation to come back to a less full inbox and some might prefer to completely go off the grid.
Taking action:
- Draft a team communication agreement together that allows employees to “turn off” and “turn on” in a way that removes the pressure to always be on and accessible, preventing burnout and optimizing their performance and well-being.
Think about the following things when doing so:
- When should different communication channels like your chat platform, text, or email be used? And what are the response times for different channels?
- What are the expectations around after-hours communication?
- When and how should urgent matters be communicated during and outside work hours?
- How do we handle time zone awareness well?
2. Belief in Balance
Leaders who believe harmony is a necessity and put humanity before hustle create the foundation for a thriving workplace. Even if you and your team are “balance believers,” thoughts that dismiss harmony are everywhere.
Taking action:
- Identify and challenge unconscious beliefs that sabotage harmony (e.g., “long hours = commitment” or “boundaries = weakness”).
- Set a positive example by openly sharing how you manage your workload and prioritize boundaries as a leader.
3. Workload Optimization
Overwork is one of the biggest culprits of work-life conflict. Regularly audit roles and responsibilities to ensure tasks are distributed fairly and align with team strengths.
Taking action:
- Make it safe and simple to raise the “I’m maxed out” flag.
- Encourage people to protect their time for uninterrupted work.
- Build in 15% “white space” on calendars for unexpected disruptions and last-minute demands.
4. Purposeful Meeting Management
Meetings can be a notorious time-suck, and too often employees find them to be unproductive and unnecessary. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Taking action:
- Limit attendance to essential participants and empower employees to decline meetings when their presence isn’t needed.
- Include a clear purpose, agenda, and desired outcomes in the invite.
- Experiment with alternatives, like asynchronous updates or walking meetings.
5. Freedom
Harmony strengthens by giving employees meaningful choices over things like when, where, and how they work. It’s empowering people to work in ways that align with their personal rhythms and responsibilities.
Taking action:
- Avoid top-down mandates that limit flexibility; co-create solutions with your team.
- Communicate to understand what employees want to be free from (e.g., micromanagement) and what they want the freedom to do (e.g., decision-making power for greater efficiency).
6. Balanced Pace
Balanced pacing allows a margin for meeting expectations and performing to the best of each person’s abilities so they can balance their tasks at their preferred pace (within reason). When team members are forced to consistently sacrifice quality and mental health for the sake of speed, frustration, and burnout are inevitable—even if they technically clock out at 5 o’clock.
Taking action:
- Build margin into deadlines to account for unexpected delays.
- Encourage focus on high-quality results over arbitrary speed benchmarks.
- Normalize taking breaks and unplugging to recharge.
Healthy Pillars, Thriving Workplaces
Well-being is personal, not policy. Work-life harmony doesn’t need to be legislated; it needs to be designed. Honoring and protecting these six pillars requires intentional actions, such as setting boundaries and clear expectations, along with effective and open communication practices. When these pillars are healthy, they create a steady foundation where employees can recharge, adapt, and show up as their best selves — at work and beyond.
Kelly Mackin is a workplace well-being innovator, human behavior researcher, speaker, and the best-selling author of the book “Work Life Well-Lived.” She is the CEO of Motives Met.