#EmailEtiquette: How to Navigate Email Communication in Off-Peak Hours 📧
In today’s fast-paced work environment, it’s becoming increasingly common for people to send and receive work-related emails outside of traditional business hours. But how should we navigate email communication during off-peak hours? Is it acceptable to send an email to your manager at 6 PM on a Saturday? Let’s explore the ins and outs of email etiquette in non-urgent situations and how to manage communication effectively.
Understanding Off-Peak Hours Email Etiquette
It’s important to consider the following points when discussing email etiquette during off-peak hours:
The nature of the email: Is the email content urgent or non-urgent?
Your role in the business: Are you a manager or a team member?
Respect for personal time: How to respect others’ off-peak hours while still addressing work-related matters.
Strategies for Navigating Off-Peak Hours Email Communication
1. Assess the urgency of the email:
Before hitting send on that email to your manager on a Saturday evening, consider the urgency of the content. If the matter can wait until business hours, it may be best to hold off on sending the email.
2. Use email scheduling tools:
If you find yourself drafting emails during off-peak hours, consider using email scheduling tools to send them during business hours. This can help you respect others’ personal time while still being productive outside of traditional work hours.
3. Set clear expectations with your team:
In a managerial position, it’s important to set clear expectations with your team regarding off-peak hours communication. Establish boundaries and guidelines for when it’s appropriate to send and respond to non-urgent emails outside of traditional work hours.
4. Practice empathy and understanding:
When receiving emails during off-peak hours, it’s essential to practice empathy and understanding. Recognize that everyone has different schedules and commitments, and it’s okay to address non-urgent emails when it’s convenient for you.
5. Use email signatures to set boundaries:
Consider including a brief note in your email signature regarding your availability during off-peak hours. This can help manage others’ expectations and reduce the likelihood of receiving non-urgent emails during your personal time.
Navigating Email Etiquette as a Manager
As a manager, navigating email etiquette during off-peak hours can be particularly challenging. Here are some additional tips for managing communication effectively:
Prioritize urgent matters:
When receiving non-urgent emails during off-peak hours, it’s crucial to prioritize urgent matters and address them accordingly. Setting clear expectations with your team regarding what constitutes an urgent email can help manage communication effectively.
Lead by example:
As a manager, leading by example is crucial in setting the tone for off-peak hours communication. Practice boundary-setting and respect for personal time, and your team is likely to follow suit.
Communicate expectations with your team:
Have a discussion with your team about the importance of respecting each other’s off-peak hours and setting clear boundaries for email communication. Encourage open dialogue about how to navigate email etiquette effectively.
In conclusion, email etiquette during off-peak hours requires a balance of productivity and respect for personal time. Whether you’re a team member or a manager, it’s essential to consider the urgency of the email, use scheduling tools, set clear expectations with your team, practice empathy, and lead by example. By navigating email communication effectively during off-peak hours, you can foster a healthy work-life balance and maintain respectful communication within your team.
In my view it’s fine to send emails any time at all, even 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning if that’s when you have the time. Just don’t expect them to be read outside of working hours.
With all of the staggered working hours, work-from-home, etc., we aren’t really a 9-5 workforce anymore.
Getting mad at somebody for sending you an email is getting mad at them for how they choose to spend their time which is pointless and silly. Nobody made you open your email. If this is on a work phone you can either turn it off or disable notifications when you’re not on duty.
Send it anytime, if you have any concerns someone might think you’re trying to have them work or reply outside work hours then just say outright that it’s not urgent.
I regularly see in email signatures now with words along the lines of “I may send emails outside of regular working hours, but I do not expect an immediate reply.” Even without this, it’s safe to say in most instances it’s taken as a given
I think that one should schedule to stay roughly within business hours.
6PM is fine, 10PM not so much.
People forget to turn off their phone and if they get woken up by a late email it’s only natural to blame the person who sent it. They should have remembered to turn off the phone, *of course they should.* But if it’s a boss or superior why take that risk?
We can schedule when emails go out now- it’s very useful.
You can schedule an email to go out later if you’re that worried about it.
I’ve never done it, so I couldn’t tell you how to do it, but it’s an option.
Although I know I don’t need to respond to it after hours, it gives me anxiety to not respond so I do. I draft a lot of emails at night and hit send in the am if it’s not something that needs to be done asap and can wait. I don’t like to contact people after hours so that’s what I personally do to get it out of my way. Even if boss says no need to respond now, I do because if not, I’ll think about it all weekend and could ruin my weekend. I also think it depends on what industry that you’re in. Although my office close on weekends, my customers are all open so I do have some communication with them. Hope that helps!
I sometimes get an email from my boss late afternoon on a Friday. Usually ideas for future projects; not quick tasks. When he first did this I hated it because I’d think about the email all weekend. I was considering how to ask him to stop but then I just… stopped opening the emails until Monday. He doesn’t expect me to do it at 4.55pm Friday; that’s just when ideas come to him. Overthinking a non-urgent email when I’m off the clock is my issue not his, so it’s on me to not open it.
I don’t care when someone emails me, so long as they don’t get pissy about my not responding on my personal time.
I don’t check my mail outside of office hours and I don’t care at what time someone is sending me e-mails. I also have to write to people from different time zones… The good thing about e-mails is that they are asynchronous. You can answer whenever you want. So if someone is angry about receiving an e-mail at the “wrong time”, that’s their problem.
You are correct. Etiquette is to turn your phone on silent, and to address business correspondences during business hours, or a convenient time. It’s at your discretion. If the store blew up and 5 people got killed, I’d reach out. If it’s about Ellen from accounting still steal people’s lunches from the refrigerator, that’s different.
I don’t see a problem with it. But some people do get bitchy about it. Some of these people think sending a email is the same as calling.
I don’t care what time I get a work email, because I don’t have to look at it until I am working. Texts are different as they do interrupt my free time, because they seem more like the person wants instant reply.
i don’t really care. i only look at my emails Mon – Fri, 8.30am – 5pm, so if someone emails me at 2am it doesn’t impact me at all. one of my managers occasionally clocks in at 5am so he can leave early to pick up his kids, half his emails are at insane hours
I work at a company with employees around the world. You very quickly get over any anxiety about emails sitting in your inbox outside of your working hours. I don’t understand the problem. It’s not like they’re texting you, right?
If I send anyone in my office an email after hours, I know they aren’t going to see it until the next time they work. Or if they do they probably won’t respond to it. Several of my coworkers don’t even have their work email on their work phone, they aren’t going to check email outside the office anyway. Have considered doing that myself, but opted to give myself choices by just turning off email notifications.
An email isn’t a demand for attention. It’s a request that can be handled at the recipient’s convenience. If it’s important they’ll call.
You just have to set expectations ahead of time or have an auto responder saying you will reply during business hours.
Some people email because it’s just the time they could email but don’t expect a response right away.
This doesn’t bother me whatsoever. People can choose when to look at their emails, and I can choose when I look at mine and when I respond.
I worked with an architect who would always email at 3:00 a.m., and I never got any emails from him after about 2:00 p.m. I would just respond to them when I was at work 🤷♀️
Don’t email coworkers off hours.
I do not have any notifications on and will not respond to emails after hours or on weekends. I do have flexible hours so I often will send emails at odd times, however I never expect any reply to them other than work time. I have ADHD so if I don’t send something I will forget. Lol
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in my company most people havea disclaimer “please note I sent this at a time good for me, reply whenever it suits you” in their signature and I think that’s a good idea
I don’t have a problem sending/getting emails outside of working hours. To me, that’s the point of an email – I’ve sent my message, I’ll wait for a reply when it comes. During the day, the person I sent it to could be in a meeting, busy doing their own work, whatever – I’m not expecting an immediate reply in the first place. If I get an email outside work hours, I’m not going to read/reply to it until the next day anyways.
I think anyone who legit gets annoyed at off-hours emails has a strange quirk about them and likely there’s a slew of other seemingly normal things that irk them as well.
As for how responsive the recipient is supposed to be, that all depends on the nature of the job and culture of the company. At my current job, people send emails all throughout the night but no one is expecting a reply until business hours. I had a marketing agency job years ago where there seemed to be no off hours and those 11pm emails were waiting for an 11:05pm response!
WTF? Just open it when you want to. Sometimes I send an email or text right now so I don’t forget.
I have never heard of this.
If someone gets angry because you have sent them an email outside of business hours, that is their issue and has nothing to do with you.
The people who get angry likely have poor (or no) boundaries with work.
I’m a director of my department at a large corporation, and I don’t even have my work email on my phone. I don’t check in when I’m not working, and I don’t expect the people I manage to do so either. Unless your job involves saving lives, there’s no “work emergency” that can’t wait until the next business day.
It’s poor etiquette to send an email *and expect a response* outside of working hours. If you send an email at 10 pm and then follow up at 10:30 because “they shouldn’t be ignoring me,” that’s bad form. Emails sent outside of work hours should not be urgent.
But email is email and not a phone call because it can be sent and responded to at everyone’s convenience. There’s often no way of knowing your email is being sent to someone who goes home at 4:30 when you go home at 6, or whether they’re on vacation, or if they’re in a different time zone. Just send it and accept the time frame of a response may not be centered around you.
In my opinion (and company), this is a non issue. When I’m done working, I’m done. Teams gets turned off on my phone. Email notifications on my phone are turned off. I’ll deal with both when I’m back online in the morning. You have to set personal boundaries or you’ll get eaten alive. Especially in a big company, which in my case deals with people in all time zones. If it’s a crisis, people can call my phone direct. That’s it.
For one, don’t write emails without using any spacing in between the sentences like this post, a giant block wall of text is poor etiquette.
The owner of my company will send me emails over the weekend knowing I won’t read or respond until Monday, if he texts or calls me out of work hours, I put in for OT because I’m technically off the clock and now I’m working . If I don’t answer until Monday I don’t put in for overtime.
My rule is simple. If replying makes my life easier I’ll do so, if not it will wait.
My company is international so email just happen when they happen. Heck when I’m in the office I’m often doing things other than sitting by my keyboard so instant response isn’t realistic.
It doesn’t bother me to receive such an email UNLESS the sender expects me to do something about it after hours.
Like I work with children involved with child welfare and a mother once emailed me on a Saturday, the day after her child went home, to say she didn’t know how much insulin to give him. That was inappropriate. She should have called the on-call Endocrinologist and I told her as much.
Leadership on my team will frequently send out emails at 8-9pm. If that email is something like “we’re meeting at 8:30am tomorrow” then I’m not reading that email until 9am so I won’t be there.
If you’re really worried about it, schedule the email delivery during working hours.
People can email me whenever they like. I’ll answer it at my convenience
I am bad about this. I am constantly fluctuating on weird schedules and tend to handle “computer stuff” in the middle of the night. Sometimes, something will notify someone, and I realize that the system sent them a notification email. I have never hooked my email to my phone and feel bad when some automated system apparently woke them up for a highly unurgent email I expected not to be seen till business hours.
My work email is on a different app that is completely muted between the hours of 5pm-7am.
Previously when I was an overnight worker I had to send all my emails in the middle of the night because that’s when my lunch break was.
Send your emails whenever you want. It’s on them whether they want to open them.
As others have stated, a lot of email signatures I’ve seen now say something along the lines of “*company* follows a flexible working schedule and I may send emails at a time that is convenient for me but I do not expect a response out of the standard 9am – 5pm work timeframes.”
I also think it’s heavily based on your internal work environment too. I worked at a company a few years ago with a super toxic manager. He knew he wasn’t allowed to say it, but if he emailed you at 9pm, he expected a response. When he first started (he took over from a really chill, cool uncle sort of manager) I definitely was not checking my emails outside of work hours. His not subtle digs got me checking my emails CONSTANTLY outside of work to the point my husband had to call me out and tell me what I was doing was unhealthy and I should start looking for a new job.
For example, I’d get into the office and see him first thing and say “oh, just quickly while I have you, do you think ordering XXXX for this event would be okay?” Like in reference to something I had emailed him about a week ago and never got a response and needed approval THAT morning to get it on time and he’d all snarkily say something like “I emailed you about that yesterday. You should have seen it” and then I’d get into my inbox and see that he emailed me at 10pm the day before. So yeah, if I had checked my emails that morning before talking to him I would have had his response without bothering him in person but he purposefully set you up with shit like that to make you look/feel bad