As a manager, should I support employees who work during the weekend?

Question

An employee I manage has started working on weekends. They have a temporary position, and probably want to make a good impression to have a chance of getting hired permanently. Higher-ups have asked for tasks to be done on a pretty tight deadline.

This employee is new and requires a lot of guidance to work efficiently. I'm used to working on weekends myself, and I have no problem dedicating a large part of my time to them if needed, but I don't want to normalize working overtime and give the impression that I expect them to work on weekends regularly. I've already told them that they didn't need to do this, but since I often work overtime on the same project myself, I'm worried that it looks like I expect overtime from them, which I don't.

How should I approach this? Should I keep supporting them during the weekend, and regularly make clear that they aren't expected to work that much? Should I stop advancing that project outside of work hours to remove the apparent expectation of overtime?

Answer 1

I don't see a reason why you cannot make this explicit with them:

I see that you sometimes work in the weekends and I sometimes do that too for a variety of reasons. However, I want to be careful to maintain a healthy work life balance and not create the impression (with you or anyone else) that overtime is expected. For this reason I'd prefer to coach you only on Monday through Friday.

Higher-ups will have to deal with missed deadlines, as they would have if your team member didn't make extra hours.

Answer 2

I'm used to working on week-ends myself ... but I don't want to normalize working overtime

This is the fundamental conflict, and I think you're going to have to decide which side of the fence you're on.

If you work on weekends, and your reports see that, they will assume that working on weekends is within the bounds of normalized behavior. Frankly, they'll be correct in that assumption.

You can tell them as much as you want that it's not expected, and the more senior or confident of them may even believe you; but you'll have set the example that it's normal, which means that a reasonable employee will view it as a within-bounds way of getting ahead.

You are a manager and a leader, and you lead by example whether you like it or not. If you don't want your reports to work weekends (which is very commendable!), the single best thing you can do is to not work weekends yourself. The second-best thing you can do is to hide that weekend work from your reports: keep emails in draft form until Monday morning, don't work on collaborative documents where they can see when you made changes, etc.

(If it's impossible to get the work done without working weekends, then you've normalized working weekends. Your two options are to either live with that fact, or else manage the project's scope or deadlines such that it's not needed.)

Answer 3

Unless weekend work is obligated by your expectations, you shouldn't feel obligated to support it.

Your obligation here is to provide your people with a reasonable chance of completing their work within what is understood to be normal working yours. If you have done that and this person must work weekends to meet the deadline, either they are not appropriate for the job or the deadline is unrealistic.

As for an approach: I would simply ignore their requests until your earliest availability during the next work week. If they get stuck, maybe they will decide to enjoy their weekend.

Answer 4

Imho the question you need to answer is "does the employees behaviour realistically improve their chance to get a permanent position?"

If yes, make it clear that this isn't expected, but don't stop them. It benefits the company, it's not a problem and it benefits the employee, too.

Additionally, you working on weekends implies that the chance for this employee getting your job some day is increased too.

Some people work on weekends for their career and not (only) because of pressure. You should know, as you seem to be one of them. Therefore not allowing this or actively preventing it doesn't seem fair. (I don't understand the other answers nor do I see any argument why you should not allow this person to benefit their career in their free time - unless they benefit is imaginary.)

Answer 5

I'm used to working on week-ends myself, and I have no problem dedicating a large part of my time to them if needed, but I don't want to normalize working overtime and give the impression that I expect them to work on week-ends regularly.

I understand that you want to allow them to work on weekends, but not create any pressure to do so.

Explicitly tell them that they will not get any reward by working on weekends and act like that.

Any benefit you would give, would forfeit your attempts to create a healthy work environment - no matter how you communicate it. Therefore do not give them credit for working on weekends during performance reviews. Do not give raises or promotions based on it.

It is hard, because probably they will be able to achieve more than other employees who have other duties/priorities on weekends. Think about this: Will your childless employees perform on the same level if they get a child next year? Will your employees be able to stop working on weekends and willing to lose the advantage, if they notice that it's affecting their health?

You should reward people who are working most effectively, not working the most hours.

Let's assume you get a high priority task in the morning that must be completed until end of business, whom would you assign it? Employee A who doesn't work on weekends but achieves most in short timeframes, or employee B who grinds through work in overtime? The answer seems obvious here, but is more difficult for long-running tasks. Employee A would be able to up the ante in case of an emergency, while employee B is already at his limit. Therefore think about timeboxes when evaluating employees.

Avoid the impression that weekends are normal working days.

You should not support working on weekends by collaborating with employees like you would on other days. For example do not answer messages and do not handle tool-based requests. You may work on your own stuff, but avoid any interaction and communication with your employees. If they are stuck because they need something from you, ignore it until your next working day.

---

Having said that, I know that under certain circumstances it's a benefit for employees to work on weekends instead of fixed hours from Monday to Friday. I have been there myself. Therefore I would not actively punish them for working on weekends.

Answer 6

If there really was an emergency that required work to be done over the weekend, you can reward them by giving them a day off during the following week.

Be clear about whether working weekends will make it more likely that you'll take them on permanently, or whether it really only depends on something out of your control (like a customer placing another big order). It might have seemed like you were just explaining the situation, but from a temporary employee's point of view it's very powerful incentive to work extra hours. They might think they're in competition with others and the company will keep whoever does the most work. It's really quite a cruel way to treat people.

Answer 7

I think OP is totally overthinking this situation. The typical setup for this kind of situation is that the OP has responded to either an email sent by the new employee, or some sort of messaging, during the weekend hours.

This doesn't even require a whole lot of thought or conversation. If you don't want to normalize weekend hours, stop responding to anything other than a telephone call. Save those responses until Monday morning. New employee will get the message very, very quickly. This is not meant to discourage the employee's momentum, but the employee will understand that others on the team have lives that the need to compartmentalize away from office stuff. It's not healthy to enable this employee to make a good impression, when it comes at the cost of the work-life balance of other team members.

Answer 8

Frankly, it is not your business

First of all, stop entertaining idea that you are somehow responsible for well being of your subordinates. All of them are adults, and have full responsibility for their lives. They are not your flock, and you are not their shepherd. Even your sentence that you "manage this employee" is probably technically wrong, i.e. your functions is likely project manager, product owner and such, not manager of such and such person.

Second, as a manager, your job would be divide tasks into work units that could be accomplished by average worker (in this case I suppose they are developers, although it is not mentioned) in contracted work hours (40 hours per week, or whatever) . If you think you that deadlines for the tasks are too optimistic, talk about that with senior management. This is also part of your job. You could talk with them about moving deadlines, getting you more resources, spending extra money for overtimes etc ...

Finally, about the employee in question : he is new, probably young, you said he requires guidance. He probably needs more time to finish tasks, which is OK for a junior. At least he is showing certain work ethics so he sacrifices his own weekend time to finish the job, and that is certainly commendable. Hopefully, in time his skills will improve and he would do things more routinely and faster. Your job as a manager is to control his overall performance, not to attempt to manage his life.