The Management Centre
yvette@managementcentre.co.uk
yvette@managementcentre.co.uk
Working in charities, social enterprises and public service organisations often comes with an unspoken rule: you’re expected to be reachable all the time.
Sometimes that pressure comes from outside. If everyone around you replies to messages late at night and never seems to switch off, it sets the tone, whatever the staff handbook says. Other times it comes from inside. Wanting to be helpful and do your best is no bad thing, but it can tip into over-extending yourself and worrying about what happens if you don’t keep it up.
When resources are stretched and the need in front of you is real, stepping away from your inbox can feel like letting someone down. Maybe you’re helping a service user with an urgent issue, or preparing documents needed for tomorrow’s meeting. But being available all the time comes at a cost, usually paid in productivity, performance and wellbeing.
A recent survey by Pro Bono Economics and Nottingham Trent University, covered by Civil Society, found that three in ten UK charities saw an increase in staff burnout over the past year, alongside rises in low wellbeing and sickness absence. An always-on culture isn’t the only cause, but it’s a significant contributor.
Frequent interruptions force your brain to stop and restart whatever it was concentrating on. Each switch drains energy, so work takes longer and feels harder than it should. For people with ADHD or other neurodivergences, the impact can be sharper still: interruptions can trigger a kind of mental blank, making it hard to recall what you were doing, or to settle back into any task at all.
Interruptions break your flow, so you lose track of where you were and what comes next. When you return, it’s easy to skip a step or forget a detail. In roles involving safeguarding, compliance or funder reporting, that’s more than an inconvenience.
Reply instantly once, and people learn to expect it every time. Answering a Director’s query at 8pm or a service user’s message at the weekend can start as helpfulness and quietly turn into pressure on both sides: other people’s priorities crowding out your own, and urgency taking over from importance across the whole team.
Strategic thinking, programme design and long-term planning all need time and headspace. Because that kind of work is hard, it’s often the first thing pushed aside for a quick reply, even though it’s this deeper work that delivers the real impact.
Being constantly interruptible keeps your brain on low-level alert, which builds into stress over time. It blurs the line between work and home, and motivation dips fast when you’ve felt busy all day but got very little of your own priority work done.
Remember: a delayed response isn’t a sign of laziness or disrespect. Responding thoughtfully, rather than reacting instantly, builds more sustainable habits, for you and for your team.
In practice
Participants and customers we work with often tell us about this pattern: someone who prides themselves on always being reachable ends up fielding a constant stream of questions, while their own priority work gets pushed later into the evening. It’s a familiar story, and one that a change in habits, not hours, tends to fix.
Each shift below works two ways: there’s something you can do for yourself, and something you can do to help someone you manage make the same change.
Help yourself: Set fixed points to check messages rather than reacting to every notification. Ask whether a task is genuinely urgent, important, or just loud.
Help someone you manage: Agree set check-in times together, rather than expecting them to be reachable all day.
Help yourself: Not everything deserves an instant response. Pause before replying, and where needed, try a considered no: “I can’t help now, but come back at 3pm when I can give this proper attention.”
Help someone you manage: When they bring you a problem, ask “what options have you thought of?” instead of solving it for them. It builds their confidence, not their dependence.
Help yourself: Block out time each week for work that needs concentration, and turn off notifications while you do it. Be direct about needing it: assertiveness means respecting your own time as well as everyone else’s.
Help someone you manage: Model this visibly, then encourage them to block their own focus time, and back them up if someone tries to interrupt it.
Help yourself: Let colleagues, trustees and external contacts know when you’re available and when you’re not, and explain why. A clear reason lands far better than silence.
Help someone you manage: Agree how and when they’ll update you on progress, so neither of you relies on being instantly reachable.
The most effective people aren’t the fastest to respond. They’re the ones who give the right things their full attention at the right time, and who help the people they manage learn to do the same.
If this sounds familiar, our Time Management and Managing Multiple Priorities programme helps managers across the charity, arts, higher education and public sectors build habits that protect focus and wellbeing without dropping the ball. Get in touch online or call us on 074 3690 3103 to find out more.
Charlie specialises in leadership development, team facilitation and strategy development. Charlie worked for over 20 years in the not-for-profit sector. Before joining =mc learning over ten years ago, she...
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