There was a time when leaving the office meant leaving work behind. The files stayed on the desk. The computer stayed in the office. Whatever remained unfinished could usually wait until the next morning.
That boundary has quietly disappeared.
Today, the office follows us home. It sits in our pockets, joins us at the dinner table and sometimes reaches us just before we go to bed.
A WhatsApp message arrives at 9.45pm.
“Please take action.”
Perhaps the sender does not expect an immediate reply. The message may have been sent simply because the sender does not want to forget about it the next morning.
Yet something has already happened to the person receiving it. The mind has returned to work.
Is something wrong? Do I need to respond now? Will I appear uncooperative if I wait until tomorrow?
The phone may be placed back on the table, but mentally, the employee has returned to the office. This raises a deceptively simple question about the modern workplace: When does the working day actually end?
There is nothing inherently wrong with WhatsApp or other communication platforms. Digital communication has made working life considerably easier. Information that once took hours to reach someone can now be delivered within seconds. When something genuinely urgent happens, this accessibility can be invaluable.
The problem begins when the ability to contact someone at any time gradually becomes an expectation that the person should also be available at any time.
Being reachable is not the same as being available for work.
A message can be sent at any hour. It does not mean every message must be answered at any hour.
This distinction matters because occupational safety and health today is no longer concerned only with accidents, dangerous machinery, chemicals or visible physical injuries.
Some workplace risks leave no visible wound.
Work-related stress, fatigue, excessive workload and difficulty mentally disengaging from work are part of the psychosocial realities of modern employment.
An employee may physically be at home but psychologically remain at work. He may be having dinner with his family. She may be helping a child with homework. Someone else may simply be resting after a long day.
Then the phone sounds.
Attention returns to work.
If this happens occasionally, it may mean little. When it becomes routine, however, the boundary between working time and personal time becomes increasingly difficult to recognise.
Technology alone is not responsible. Workplace culture matters too.
Consider a manager who prefers completing work at 11pm. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that. People organise their working lives differently.
The difficulty arises when one person’s working habits begin shaping the expectations placed on everyone else.
A manager may send a late-night message without expecting a response until the following morning. To the manager, it is simply a message.
To a subordinate, it can feel quite different. Power travels with the message.
An ordinary sentence from someone higher in the organisational hierarchy can easily be interpreted as an instruction requiring immediate attention. Digital communication at work is therefore not merely about sending and receiving information. It also involves authority, expectations, organisational culture and respect for another person’s time.
The answer is not to ban communication after working hours. That would be unrealistic. Emergencies happen. Many organisations operate beyond conventional office hours, and some matters genuinely require immediate attention.
What workplaces need instead is a more thoughtful digital culture.
Sometimes a few words are enough: “For tomorrow. No need to respond tonight.”
Imagine receiving that sentence with a work message at 10pm.
No new policy has been introduced. No sophisticated workplace programme is required. Yet those few words remove uncertainty. The employee knows that the matter can wait.
This is where leadership matters.
Good digital leadership is not about rejecting technology. It is about understanding how timing, context and organisational position affect the way a message is received.
Employees have responsibilities, too. We need to manage notifications, silence unnecessary alerts and establish reasonable boundaries around our own use of technology. Not every vibration in our pocket requires an immediate response.
But we should not make this entirely the employee’s responsibility.
Telling workers to switch off notifications achieves little if organisational culture quietly rewards those who are always online or interprets delayed responses as a lack of commitment.
Workers need digital discipline. Organisations need digital empathy.
This will become even more important as workplaces embrace artificial intelligence and increasingly sophisticated digital systems. Technology will allow us to work faster, communicate instantly and remain connected almost everywhere.
That progress should be welcomed. But greater connectivity should not automatically mean greater availability.
After work, employees return to being parents, spouses, children, friends, neighbours and members of their communities. They need time for those roles. They also need time simply to rest.
Perhaps before sending that work message at 10pm, we should ask one simple question: Does this person really need to receive this now, or can it wait until tomorrow?
Technology has made it remarkably easy to reach one another. Perhaps the next skill the modern workplace needs to learn is knowing when not to.
Dr Khairul Hafezad Abdullah is a senior lecturer in Occupational Safety and Health Management at the School of Business Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Twentytwo13.
