There’s a new discussion popping up in various European countries and Australia. It’s about establishing a right for employees to completely disengage from their work.

No phone calls. No texts. No emails.

In the US, we pretty much get it for hourly workers. But for salaried? Our culture tends more toward expecting – sometimes demanding – complete accessibility. But it depends on the organization’s culture.

You realize that complete disengagement during non-work-hours has lasting benefit, right? Because you’ve tried to design jobs which can be done in a certain number of hours, and people have the need to mentally and physically rejuvenate.

That doesn’t mean everybody needs to work the SAME hours, of course – especially if you’re delivering 24×7 service or need to cover widely varying timezones.

If you’re finding that too much valuable work is taking place during people’s personal time, you need to redesign the job.

This struck me right in the heart when I woke up at 3am on a Sunday, sweating and unable to sleep because of all the worries I had at work. That’s when I realized that I needed to change jobs and career path, because it was only headed to get worse as I increased my management responsibilities.

That’s what burnout looks like.

When you have your people headed toward burnout, it’s time to redefine how the job works. Quite likely for many people, too, because there will be folks who keep up the good fight … until something snaps. That’s a great way to lose your best people.

Respect people’s personal time so they can give you their best while they’re working.