The short version
- Out of hours contact is normal in most companies, which means a policy is describing something that already happens rather than inventing a restriction.
- One page, five clauses. Longer policies are read once and forgotten.
- The clause that decides whether it works is the one about what happens when someone does not reply.
- A policy that bans sending fails. People send anyway, from personal accounts, and now it is invisible.
Most companies under a hundred people have no written position on out of hours contact. They have a set of assumptions, which differ by person, and a few people quietly answering at 22:00 because they think they are expected to.
"Nobody ever told me to answer in the evening. Nobody ever told me not to, either."
Why write one at all
Three reasons, none of them about being a nice employer.
It is already happening, so you are choosing between an unwritten norm and a written one. Unwritten norms are set by whoever is most available, which is usually the most anxious person on the team.
It is a retention question. People rarely resign over evening messages and they frequently resign over the accumulated feeling of never being off, and they will give a different reason in the exit conversation.
And in a growing number of jurisdictions there are legal obligations around disconnection, so having a written position is worth doing before someone asks. See right to disconnect by country.
The five clauses
| Clause | Example wording |
|---|---|
| 1. Working hours | "Each person states their working hours in their profile. Those are the hours we expect a reply in." |
| 2. Sending is fine | "You may write whenever suits you. Use scheduled send where your tool offers it." |
| 3. Replying is not expected | "Nobody is expected to read or reply outside their stated hours. This applies to everyone, including leadership." |
| 4. The urgent route | "Genuine urgency means a phone call to the on call person. Only these three situations qualify." |
| 5. What happens if nobody replies | "If you need an answer before their next working day and it is not on the urgent list, proceed with the stated default and flag it." |
Five clauses, one page, an afternoon to write and circulate. The temptation is to add exceptions for client facing roles and busy periods. Resist it, because a policy with exceptions written in is a policy that applies to nobody in practice.
The clause that makes it real
Clause five is the one people skip and the one that determines whether the rest holds.
Without it, a message sent at 19:00 that genuinely blocks something puts the sender in an impossible position. They have been told not to expect a reply and they cannot proceed, so they escalate or they message anyway. Either way the policy loses.
With a stated default, work continues. "If you cannot reach the owner, take the reversible option and flag it in the morning" means nobody is stuck and nobody is contacted. It also, quietly, forces you to have defined defaults, which is valuable on its own.
Why sending bans fail
Banning out of hours sending sounds protective and reliably backfires.
People work when they work. Someone with young children often does an hour at 21:00 and a ban makes their working pattern non compliant. So they send from a personal account, or they hold the message until morning and forget, or they send it anyway and everyone learns the policy is decorative.
Separate the two acts. Sending is about the writer's schedule. Replying is about the reader's. A policy that protects the reader and leaves the writer alone is the one people can follow honestly. See fixing the always on problem before HR writes a policy.
The thing underneath the policy
A policy changes what people are permitted to do. It does not change what makes them feel they have to.
People answer in the evening because they know a colleague is stuck, and because they are the only person who has the answer. That feeling is accurate, and no clause overrides it. The most conscientious person on your team will keep answering at 22:00 with the policy printed out beside them.
So remove the need. This is what StandIn is built for. At the end of the day each person spends about ninety seconds on a brief: what moved, what is open, what is blocked, what is next, mostly drafted from the work that already happened. In the evening, their StandIn answers colleagues from that brief, in their words, with a source under every answer. It never guesses, and when the answer is not in the record it says so and names who to ask. The colleague is not stuck, so the conscientious person is not needed, so the policy is something the team can keep rather than something it admires. See how it works and quiet hours that survive.
Common Questions
How do we handle a team across several time zones?
Working hours are per person rather than per company, so the policy already handles it. What matters is that people publish their hours and that meetings respect them.
What about client demands for out of hours response?
Put it in the contract with a named cover arrangement and a price, or do not offer it. What fails is an informal expectation that one account manager absorbs privately.
Should leadership be exempt?
The opposite. A founder who replies at midnight sets the real policy regardless of the written one, because people infer expectations from behaviour rather than documents.
How do we know whether it is working?
Look at message timing by person rather than in aggregate. The average will look fine while two people carry all of it, and those two are the ones who will leave.
When you're off, your StandIn is on.
It answers your teammates' questions from work you've already done, in your words, with a source under every answer.