stop texting your employees at midnight: And other way leaders can improve employee wellbeing.

• Author: Rogers-Whitehead, Carrie

You hear a buzz on your nightstand. Blearily you reach for it; it's your boss, again. You wake up quickly--what is it this time? You have just completed a work day filled with Slack messages, texts, emails, notifications, and more. You are tired, but now you have yet another message to respond to.

According to a 2017 study entitled, "Work, Stress, Coping, and Stress Management," "the source of stress, such as workload, seem to exacerbate with improvements in technology." In other words, instead of relieving us from stress, technology increases it. In fact, the same article found that almost half of those over 13 years old planned their vacations around accessibility to email, and 83 percent check their email at least once a day while away from the office.

Bosses increase that tech stress even more, as they are the ones sending out many of the alerts, pings, and notices that punctuate the day. They are the people setting policy on technology use, either explicitly in writing, or implicitly by their actions. Bosses also examine their employee's tech use: are their staff on task? Are they responding quickly enough?

And yet, how often do bosses examine their own tech habits?

STOP PINGING YOUR TEAM

"The manager that asks employees to communicate via email, and then doesn't respond and projects are put on hold or at least slowed down. 1 see this happening particularly in the hiring process when companies lose good candidates to their competitors," says Karla Stoker, an HR professional.

"[And then there's] the manager who sends emails at all hours of the night and weekends, expecting an immediate response, even at 3 AM," Ms. Stoker adds. "[We keep hearing about] the importance of sleep, which makes those late-night emails counter-productive."

In addition to literally losing sleep by being woken from pings, employees also lose sleep wondering when the text will occur. Some even struggle falling asleep after handling a work issue. Ms. Stoker has witnessed other examples of the distracted, and not so good boss. "The last thing I have seen is a manager that berates an employee via email rather than having a productive face-to-face conversation."

Bosses affect employee health and wellbeing. Some of those effects include lack of sleep, anxiety, stress, low morale, unclear expectations, and health concerns. Bosses may feel like they are being efficient and productive firing off those emails at night and texting during the day. Multi-tasking makes them...