The Student Room Group

Work/home boundaries

Hello,
Does anyone have any advice on creating the boundary between work and home… my workplace uses messenger as the primary source of communication and I’m in 6 different group chats for it. My boss has made it very clear that they do not like being messaged on their days off and I respect that and I only message them when they’re at work. But, they have messaged me multiple times when I’m not there to ask me about rotas ect. I’ve also had times where I’ve come in to work and been confronted about “ignoring” messages because my Facebook said I was active. I personally don’t think we should use messenger as I don’t think it’s fair that our active statuses are visible and I’ve brought this upand I have mentioned that WhatsApp would be more professional but I’ve just been told people don’t use WhatsApp these days. I’ve tried turning my activity status off but apparently people can still see it I’ve also tried muting the numerous gcs and only having notifications on when I’m at work but this still doesn’t work as I then get texts if I don’t reply on messenger.

It’s very draining and starting to annoy me I thought about just deleting Facebook cause I only use it for work now really anyway but then I feel like I’m missing out…
Original post by Anonymous
Hello,
Does anyone have any advice on creating the boundary between work and home… my workplace uses messenger as the primary source of communication and I’m in 6 different group chats for it. My boss has made it very clear that they do not like being messaged on their days off and I respect that and I only message them when they’re at work. But, they have messaged me multiple times when I’m not there to ask me about rotas ect. I’ve also had times where I’ve come in to work and been confronted about “ignoring” messages because my Facebook said I was active. I personally don’t think we should use messenger as I don’t think it’s fair that our active statuses are visible and I’ve brought this upand I have mentioned that WhatsApp would be more professional but I’ve just been told people don’t use WhatsApp these days. I’ve tried turning my activity status off but apparently people can still see it I’ve also tried muting the numerous gcs and only having notifications on when I’m at work but this still doesn’t work as I then get texts if I don’t reply on messenger.

It’s very draining and starting to annoy me I thought about just deleting Facebook cause I only use it for work now really anyway but then I feel like I’m missing out…

I'm not a Facebook user, so forgive me if what I'm about suggest won't work for some reason, but can you not have two Facebook accounts - one personal and one professional?

If you've come up with a way of "hiding", but receive text messages anyway, then does your phone not allow you to customise the alert sound per sender? Setting every work colleague's alert sound to "silent" would soon sort that out.

If you get grief for ignoring messages, just politely let them know that it was your day off. (You'd need to respond to each such message as soon as you were working again, though.)

I suspect that they know they're contacting you on your day off, and expect you to respond anyway. Such people need to be "trained" into understanding that you'e not on call 24/7.
just raise it with you manager that no can contact staff when they are off.unless in dire emergency.. you are not obliged to reply when not working.
I would say if they are adamant about using messenger then set up a new Facebook account just for work purposes so the work colleagues to this account and remove them from your personal Facebook account. Then only log in to the work account you set up on the days you are working and log back out of the account when finished for the day. If necessary block their accounts on your personal account so they can't contact you via that.

Another option would be to get another sim card to get a new phone number and update your work details with this new number and work colleagues to contact you on. Keep your old number but make something up that you needed new number/phone to the people at your work. Just have it as a 'pay as you go' but don't top up and use an old phone you might have in a drawer and don't use it at all.

Otherwise speak to managers or if not your HR department if necessary saying contacting outside of work hours shouldn't happen. It might be worth looking at your legal rights regarding work contacting you outside of work hours. You don't have to respond to any communications from work outside of working hours so don't worry about them saying anything when you go in.
Original post by scorpion95
I would say if they are adamant about using messenger then set up a new Facebook account just for work purposes so the work colleagues to this account and remove them from your personal Facebook account. Then only log in to the work account you set up on the days you are working and log back out of the account when finished for the day. If necessary block their accounts on your personal account so they can't contact you via that.
Another option would be to get another sim card to get a new phone number and update your work details with this new number and work colleagues to contact you on. Keep your old number but make something up that you needed new number/phone to the people at your work. Just have it as a 'pay as you go' but don't top up and use an old phone you might have in a drawer and don't use it at all.
Otherwise speak to managers or if not your HR department if necessary saying contacting outside of work hours shouldn't happen. It might be worth looking at your legal rights regarding work contacting you outside of work hours. You don't have to respond to any communications from work outside of working hours so don't worry about them saying anything when you go in.

good advice. I think it is out of order to keep calling when you are not at work

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