Times have changed. In the old days (aka pre-pandemic) it was a badge of honor to answer emails and texts after business hours. It showed your boss that you were dedicated, available, and hungry to work. The corporate world developed incentives to encourage you to work more. For example, Goldman Sachs, the investment banking firm, paid for employee dinners if they were on-site working past 7 p.m.—plus the fare for the car service to get them home late at night. Talk about incentivizing after-hours work!

But the cultural work winds have changed. Today, bosses are motivated to retain employees because the labor market is so shallow: Finding and keeping good employees is a priority for everyone. And when employees aren’t able to shut off their emails and texts, they can simply call a recruiter and find a new job.  

In this new cultural work environment, an emphasis is equally placed on employee satisfaction and employee productivity. Employee satisfaction is assessed through regular staff surveys; these survey responses form the basis of leadership performance review discussions. If your staff is complaining about working too many hours outside of their 9 to 5, it’s the leader’s responsibility to do something about it. After-hours work is actively being discouraged at many workplaces, but is still an issue. Just last year, one study found that a whopping 81% of remote employees check and answer emails and texts outside of work hours.    

Let’s look at why answering emails and texts after hours is backfiring on you, the employee.

Employee satisfaction surveys: Companies are paying close attention to employee retention and satisfaction trends. This data is used to inform bonuses and raises. Employees who feel they have to answer emails and texts outside of work hours drives job dissatisfaction, a statistic at an all-time low. Being overworked is no longer a good thing: it’s a thing that can get your boss penalized and thus, in turn, can affect you.

Knee-jerk reactions: Texts are short. It’s not a medium where you can explain the nuance of the situation like you can with a phone call or a face-to-face interaction. Your desire to “deal with the text real quick” may backfire on you. You make a quick, uninformed decision instead of sleeping on it for 24 hours and getting all the facts. Faster is not always better.

Brain fatigue: Evening texts arrive when you’re in the middle of doing other things. It’s time to be present with your family, watch your favorite shows, or walk your dog. The minute the text comes in, you’re distracted from the activities that help you recharge for the next workday—your brain flips into work mode, thereby depleting your brain “battery.”

Think of your brain like a phone battery: When too many tabs are open, your phone drains much faster. The same thing happens to your brain when you flip between different files. Brain fatigue is real, and dealing with evening texts risks depleting yourself for the next workday.  

Mistaken identity: One small slip of the thumb, and you risk sending a work email to a good friend. Or a work enemy. Double oops if the text contains confidential information or something salacious about an employee or client. Of course, you didn’t mean to send the text to the wrong person, and now, inadvertently, you’ll have even more of a mess to clean up. Your quick response just cost you time and energy to rectify the situation.  

Being a keener: Keeners are the overperformers in the office. They put their hand up to help whenever the boss asks. Up until the pandemic, these people were the ones who routinely moved up the corporate ladder by demonstrating their capacity to work harder than everyone else.

Post-pandemic, employers are facing staff burnout directly impacting their bottom lines, so, being a keener, which can lead to burnout, is less socially acceptable than it was before. It’s very expensive to hire and train new employees. As a result, employers encourage people to work less and to be more effective with the time they spend working. Rethink your corporate profile and adjust from “keener” to efficient employee who can self-manage their work and stress levels.

The “work-is-everything” employee profile is less attractive to employers. The new cultural expectation is to work hard during the day and take time to recharge after hours. Putting in too many hours and answering texts or emails after 5 p.m., suggests you can’t manage your workload. Also, you’re not modeling healthy work-life boundaries to your direct reports.  

In the post-pandemic work environment, answering texts after hours is bad employee behavior. Sending that quick text or email has real risks associated with it. So, think carefully before you respond.  

Article Originally Posted on Fast Company.