Featuring scholarly and practitioner insights from HR and people leaders, industry experts, and researchers.

Modern knowledge work has dissolved the traditional boundaries of the workday, trapping employees in an always-on culture driven by digital devices and implicit availability expectations. This constant connectivity severely impairs psychological detachment, leading to widespread employee exhaustion, diminished well-being, and significant turnover intentions. Because compliance-oriented policies alone fail to alter deeply ingrained workplace habits, organizations must implement comprehensive, systemic reforms. Effective solutions require explicit response norms, leader modeling backed by formal rules, predictable team-owned time off, and thoughtful technical guardrails. Ultimately, treating recovery as a core component of the work system protects employee health while sustaining long-term organizational performance.

Abstract: Sleep loss is widespread among managers, executives, and workers in safety-critical roles, yet it is usually treated as a private lifestyle matter rather than an organizational risk. This article synthesizes peer-reviewed research, recent survey evidence, regulatory developments, and documented organizational practice to argue that insufficient sleep is a leadership and work-design problem. New survey data from 2026 suggest that many leaders make consequential decisions after short nights, conceal their fatigue, and work in cultures that treat sleeplessness as a sign of commitment, while a large survey of European airline pilots reports widespread microsleeps and low trust in fatigue reporting. Field and experimental studies link poor sleep to abusive supervision, reduced charisma, unethical conduct, workplace deviance, injuries, and medical errors. The article reviews five evidence-based responses: developing sleep leadership as a management competency, setting guardrails on hours and recovery windows, designing schedules around human biology, building non-punitive fatigue risk management, and increasing employees' control over their work time. It closes with guidance for building long-term organizational capability for rested judgment.

Modern knowledge work has dissolved the traditional boundaries of the workday, trapping employees in an always-on culture driven by digital devices and implicit availability expectations. This constant connectivity severely impairs psychological detachment, leading to widespread employee exhaustion, diminished well-being, and significant turnover intentions. Because compliance-oriented policies alone fail to alter deeply ingrained workplace habits, organizations must implement comprehensive, systemic reforms. Effective solutions require explicit response norms, leader modeling backed by formal rules, predictable team-owned time off, and thoughtful technical guardrails. Ultimately, treating recovery as a core component of the work system protects employee health while sustaining long-term organizational performance.

Abstract: After-hours availability has become one of the least examined features of modern work. Telemetry from Microsoft 365 shows email checking before 6 a.m., inbox activity late into the evening, and meetings creeping past 8 p.m., while survey data from Europe indicate that most teleworkable employees receive work contact outside contracted hours in a typical week. Regulators have responded. Australia, Ontario, and at least nine European countries now regulate disconnection in some form, Luxembourg began enforcing penalties in July 2026, Mexico's lower house approved a disconnection bill in March 2026, and the European Commission has folded the issue into a proposed Quality Jobs Act. This article synthesizes research on availability expectations, psychological detachment, leader signaling, and the email urgency bias, and examines what disconnection policies do and do not achieve. It argues that compliance-oriented policies alone rarely change behavior, and proposes five evidence-based responses: explicit response norms, leader modeling backed by formal rules, predictable team time off, technical guardrails, and the redesign and fair compensation of genuine after-hours demand.

Reduced working time has emerged as a central topic in modern management, driven by proposed legislation like the U.S. Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act and widespread international pilots. Recent empirical research, including a significant multi-country study published in Nature Human Behavior, demonstrates that income-preserving reductions in work hours significantly enhance employee wellbeing, physical health, and job satisfaction while maintaining overall productivity and boosting talent retention. However, achieving these positive outcomes is not automatic, as simple schedule compression often introduces work intensification and fatigue rather than genuine recovery. Successfully implementing shorter hours requires treating the change as a work-design intervention by eliminating low-value tasks, tailoring schedules to operational demands, and establishing rigorous measurement metrics. Ultimately, organizations must proactively build time capability to manage working hours strategically, ensuring that productivity gains and regulatory shifts are navigated effectively regardless of legislative mandates.

Reduced working time has emerged as a central topic in modern management, driven by proposed legislation like the U.S. Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act and widespread international pilots. Recent empirical research, including a significant multi-country study published in Nature Human Behavior, demonstrates that income-preserving reductions in work hours significantly enhance employee wellbeing, physical health, and job satisfaction while maintaining overall productivity and boosting talent retention. However, achieving these positive outcomes is not automatic, as simple schedule compression often introduces work intensification and fatigue rather than genuine recovery. Successfully implementing shorter hours requires treating the change as a work-design intervention by eliminating low-value tasks, tailoring schedules to operational demands, and establishing rigorous measurement metrics. Ultimately, organizations must proactively build time capability to manage working hours strategically, ensuring that productivity gains and regulatory shifts are navigated effectively regardless of legislative mandates.

In this HCI Webinar, I talk with Sam Mandel about driving compassionate, forward-thinking health care. Sam Mandel is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles and a driving force in compassionate, forward-thinking mental health care. His commitment to supporting others began early when, at twelve years old, he volunteered at a teen suicide prevention hotline. That formative experience sparked a lifelong dedication to mental health advocacy and ultimately led him to co-found Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles in 2014 alongside his father, Dr. Steven L. Mandel. Sam is a recognized voice in innovative psychiatry and ketamine infusion therapy. He has been featured in Entrepreneur’s Top 10 Inspiring Healthcare Entrepreneurs to Watch and honored by MSN as an Entrepreneur Leading the Business Frontier. He is also a two-time Stevie Award recipient for Best Entrepreneur and Thought Leader of the Year at the American Business Awards. Major media outlets frequently seek out Sam for commentary, and he regularly speaks at scientific conferences and industry events on the current state and future of mental health care. Under Sam’s leadership, Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles has delivered more than 35,000 ketamine infusions to over 6,000 patients, helping establish one of the field's most respected standards of care. His work continues to shape the future of mental health care through a commitment to clinical excellence, ethical leadership, and genuine compassion for the individuals and families KCLA serves. Outside of the clinic, Sam enjoys weightlifting, spending time in nature, attending concerts, dancing, snowboarding, traveling, and being with friends and family.

Reduced working time has emerged as a central topic in modern management, driven by proposed legislation like the U.S. Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act and widespread international pilots. Recent empirical research, including a significant multi-country study published in Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrates that income-preserving reductions in work hours significantly enhance employee wellbeing, physical health, and job satisfaction while maintaining overall productivity and boosting talent retention. However, achieving these positive outcomes is not automatic, as simple schedule compression often introduces work intensification and fatigue rather than genuine recovery. Successfully implementing shorter hours requires treating the change as a work-design intervention by eliminating low-value tasks, tailoring schedules to operational demands, and establishing rigorous measurement metrics. Ultimately, organizations must proactively build time capability to manage working hours strategically, ensuring that productivity gains and regulatory shifts are navigated effectively regardless of legislative mandates.