Hours and Boundaries
8 articles on hours and boundaries.
Right to Disconnect by Country: An Employer's Guide
Law in several European countries and Australia. No enacted right in the US as of 2026. Most regimes require a written policy rather than a ban on contact.
An After Hours Communication Policy You Can Write in an Afternoon
One page, five clauses, an afternoon. Sending is fine, replying is not expected, and the clause that makes it real says what to do when nobody replies.
Right to Disconnect for Distributed Teams: the Operational Guide
Disconnect policies assume one time zone. Anchor everything to declared personal hours, and answer the question every policy skips.
Team Quiet Hours That Survive the First Urgent Question
Quiet hours die at the first undefined exception. Write the exceptions first, keep them to two, and note that most urgent evening messages are status questions.
Response-Time Expectations: Put Them in Writing Before Someone Burns Out
Unwritten response times default to the fastest responder. Publish a table in the recipient working hours, and include the row that costs nobody anything.
Fixing Always-On on Your Own Team, Before HR Writes a Policy
Nobody asked them to be online at 23:00. Being unavailable has a visible cost and being available does not.
The 22:00 Message: How to Write It Without the Team Reading It
Writing late is fine. Sending is not. Separate composing from delivering, and ask the record before you write to the person at all.
Your Engineer Logged Off at 18:00. Here Is What to Do With the Question at 22:00.
Three bad options at 22:00: message them, guess, or lose the morning. Almost every night question is retrieval.
Your team’s week, answered from the work.
If this is your team’s week, see what a StandIn does with it.