Holiday Messages

Discussion of whether or not the act of sending business emails, chat messages, etc. on weekends and evenings is acceptable.

My personal opinion is like this: “I think it’s a good idea.

• It is incorrect to implicitly consider “weekends” and “evenings” to be outside of work hours and weekday daytime hours to be within work hours.
  • For example, some people take paid leave.
  • Some people work time shifts for family reasons.
  • International teams have different time zones.
    • People work different hours in workplaces where Freedom to Work is large.
• It is not correct to require the sender of a message to figure out if the recipient is on duty before sending it.
  • Large costs when messages are sent to different departments
  • Increased cost of sending messages hinders information sharing.
• The sender should not mind sending it, and if there is any problem with it, the receiver should give feedback.
  • People are not espers, so if you don’t tell them, they won’t get the message.
    • hesitating to say something bothering me at work …, I was blackmailed by a colleague | Cybozu style []](https://cybozushiki.cybozu.co.jp/articles/m005313.html) answerability
• When a prompt response to a message is required for business purposes
  • It is not released from work and should be treated as work time.
  • If a response to a message is requested during the night or on a holiday, there must be just compensation.

On the other hand, it was interesting to gather various points of view on this matter, so let me summarize

Case 1

• The team’s Slack policy is clearly stated.
• I tell them at orientation.
• policy
  • Mention to those who need it, regardless of whether it is at night or on holidays.
  • No need to look at mentions outside of work hours.
  • Set your own notification settings.
  • Use HERE with caution.
• I think that it is not good if there is a leakage of confirmation by not attaching a mentions with care.
• Immediately point out any inappropriate use of here.

Case 2

• It instructs as follows

  • Mentions and DMs may be sent as you wish.

  • Automatically turn off notifications after hours with Slack’s DND (Do Not Disturb) function!

    • 

  • Non-discretionary employees:.

    • If you need to reply after hours for any reason, record it as operating hours.
    • If you disable DND after hours, report it to your supervisor on the Slack channel for time and attendance management.

  • Discretionary employees are free to do as they see fit.

• Mentioning HERE and CHANNELs is a good idea, but there are certain channels that are not good to do so.

Case 3

• opinion
  • Don’t contact me on holidays.
  • Once upon a time, if you didn’t look at your email on weekends, you didn’t have to worry about it, these days, notifications fly.
  • Out of notice is a good argument, but it doesn’t work that way.
  • So, in principle, we shouldn’t send them.
• Complaints felt by those who expressed this opinion
  • My boss throws DMs at me at midnight or even on my day off.
• Digging deeper, we found that a combination of the following factors were causing dissatisfaction
  • Cannot create a private channel without asking the IT department (internal rule issue)
  • Lately, there have been more topics that can’t be done in public channels.
  • Due to the high cost of creating private channels, supervisors use DM
  • My boss was always someone who was active on holidays and evenings.
  • The supervisor is not looking at the calendar of the person to whom the message is sent.
  • +Bad Slack specs (below)

Supplemental Case 3

• Slack does not allow individual notification off of DMs from a specific person.
  • Only a collective “Receive notifications of DMs and replies” can be set in the overall account settings.
  • 
• It is possible to stop all together with the Do Not Disturb function.
  • However, this feature only looks at the time of day, so even if you have weekends off, it cannot automatically stop on weekends.

Case 4

• He tells the entire team that
  • No matter what time they are sent, you don’t have to see them until you are ready to work.
  • You don’t have to do anything to see it.
• Having made the above known, the sender can “send it whenever he/she wants to.”
• This team has different team members working different hours due to time zones and family situations.
  • No common “business hours” exist.
  • I have a family situation and work from 10pm-3am at night.

Case 5

• My former boss was not a fan of chat tools.
• … says
  • Just don’t answer the phone.”
  • Chat can see my notifications when I’m working on my computer.”
  • It puts pressure on them, it takes time away from them.”
• It may be that the notification control of the chat tool at that time was not so good, but I thought that what people perceive as an interaction with their work is quite different from one person to another.
• If we can get better notification control, people who send them can just send them at any time they want, and so on.

Case 6

• It is not a good idea to do individually guessed DMs during the holidays.
• Public channel is OK if the culture is clearly defined.
  • For example, sharing information to spaces that do not require a response is OK.
  • Separate the sending method for “communication that requires a response or confirmation even offline” and “communication that does not.”

About Hangout Chat

• Hangout Chat allows you to turn notifications on and off by thread, even in the same room.
  • Facebook equivalent of “Stop following this post”.
• Hangout Chat has a mode where the history disappears in 24 hours.
  • https://support.google.com/hangoutschat/answer/7664687?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=ja
  • When this mode is on, if you inadvertently talk to someone who is resting, there is not even a trace when they return to work.

Related case study:

• I feel bad about mensching and notifying employees on their days off.
• If I don’t post it on Slack the moment I think of it, I’ll probably forget it.
• It’s a hassle to write it down and send it at the end of the week.
• If you don’t menshon, you’ll be buried in a mass of messages.
• I would like a message reservation function.
  • Q: Can’t I just use the remind function? src
  • A: No, because reminders fly instead of messages

relevance

• Line chatting issue - Self-expression and overflowing of notices
• Slack Thread - Misunderstanding Slack’s threading feature and notification coverage

---

This page is auto-translated from /nishio/休日のメッセージ using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.