It is 8.47pm. A client has sent a message. You are already thinking about it, because that is part of being the person whose name is on the lease, the payroll and the problem. So you forward it to someone on your team with a quick “Can you have a look first thing?”

You mean no harm. They see the notification. They spend the evening wondering whether “first thing” really means now.

That gap—between what a founder intended and what a team member experienced—is where a lot of modern leadership goes wrong. Not because the founder is cruel. Because the founder is used to carrying the business in their head all the time, and forgets that their urgency lands differently on someone who is not paid to be permanently on call.

Australia’s right-to-disconnect rules give employees a right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to out-of-hours contact unless that refusal is unreasonable. The rules have applied to small-business employees since 26 August 2025 (Fair Work Ombudsman). But the leadership lesson is bigger than compliance: a good team should not need to decode your after-hours messages to know what you expect.

Stop confusing access with availability

Phones have made every employee reachable. That does not make every employee available.

The old expectation was often informal: everyone knows we are a small business, everyone chips in, and a late-night message is just part of the deal. The trouble with informal expectations is that they reward the people who are most willing to sacrifice their boundaries—and quietly penalise everyone else.

The Fair Work guidance does not make all contact outside ordinary hours unlawful. It asks whether a refusal to respond is unreasonable, considering the reason for contact, how disruptive it is, the employee’s role and remuneration, and their personal circumstances including caring responsibilities. It also considers whether they are compensated for being available (Fair Work Ombudsman).

That is a useful leadership framework even before a lawyer gets involved. A customer emergency at a hotel is different from a founder remembering an idea after dinner. An operations manager genuinely rostered on-call is different from a junior employee who happens to check Slack at night. Treating those situations as identical is lazy management.

Decide what an emergency actually is

Most businesses use the word “urgent” far too generously. A genuine emergency might be a safety issue, a serious service failure, a security incident or an event that will cause immediate material harm if nobody acts. A client who is impatient, a task that was forgotten, or a founder who would like an answer before bed usually does not belong in the same category.

Write down the difference with your team. One page is enough. Name the channel for genuine out-of-hours escalation, who is expected to monitor it, how compensation or time in lieu works where relevant, and what can wait until the next working day.

Do not make this a policy document that sits unopened in a shared drive. Talk through three real examples. “A website goes down at 9pm.” “A customer asks for a quote on Sunday.” “I have an idea I do not want to forget.” People will learn more from the conversation than the headings.

Here is my blunt take: if everything is urgent, you have not built a responsive business. You have built a nervous system that runs through other people’s phones.

Change the founder habits that create anxiety

Founders often say, “I never expect a reply outside work.” Then they send messages at night, ask follow-up questions at 7am, and praise the person who responds fastest. The team hears the behaviour, not the disclaimer.

Use scheduled sending for non-urgent messages. Keep an idea list for yourself rather than dropping thoughts into a team channel at 11pm. If you do need to contact someone, state the expectation plainly: “No need to respond tonight; please pick this up tomorrow after 10.” Then mean it.

The same applies to weekend work. There will be periods when a small business needs an extraordinary push. Pretending otherwise is performative. But name the period, explain why it matters, set an endpoint and ask what support people need. A launch week is different from a culture where every week is launch week because nobody has made hard prioritisation decisions.

Respect is not the same as softness

Some owners worry that boundaries will make the business slower or less committed. I think the opposite is often true. People who can switch off are more likely to bring judgment, energy and goodwill when they are working. People who are permanently braced for interruption become guarded, exhausted or quietly looking elsewhere.

You can still hold high standards. You can expect people to respond during their agreed hours, take ownership of work and flag risks early. The standard is clarity, not unlimited access.

That clarity also protects managers. A team leader who gets texts from you late at night may start copying that behaviour with their own direct reports. Within a few months, a single founder habit has become the culture. The team does not need another speech about wellbeing. It needs you to stop modelling the very behaviour you say you dislike.

Have the conversation before there is resentment

Ask your team, directly, how after-hours communication currently feels. Do not ask in a way that makes “fine” the only safe answer. Try: “What messages or situations make it hard to switch off? What do you need to know to feel confident leaving work at work?”

You may hear something uncomfortable. Good. That is information you can use before it becomes a resignation letter or a dispute.

Where legal obligations, awards or contracts are relevant, get proper workplace-relations advice for your circumstances. But do not outsource the leadership part. Your people should not need a regulation to prove that their evenings belong to them.

You are allowed to care fiercely about the business. You are not entitled to make every person around you carry that care at the same hour and in the same way. Lead like you know the difference.