Employees are now being encouraged to “switch off,” take vacations, and stop checking emails after hours. The message is clear: mental health requires disconnection. Yet, according to a series of 16 studies published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes by Eva C. Buechel and Elisa Solinas, those very behaviours are viewed negatively by managers. Welcome to the “detachment paradox.”
The researchers asked hundreds of managers and employees to evaluate typical scenarios: an employee who sets an out-of-office reply, leaves their laptop at work, or takes a few days off. The results were disappointing. The same managers who recognized that these practices improve well-being and performance rated those employees as having less potential to be promoted. In other words, disconnecting makes you a better performer but a less credible one.
The underlying mechanism seems to be the perception of lower commitment. Managers associate constant availability with passion and dedication, while an employee who protects their personal time appears less motivated. Even managers who claim to encourage disconnection still tend to penalize employees who actually do it. The authors show, however, that this bias can be reduced. When disconnection is motivated by professional development, such as attending a workshop, or when the company enforces a no-email policy on weekends, the penalty disappears. In short, it’s not attitudes that need to change, but norms.
The message for HR is clear: this paradox won’t be solved through awareness campaigns but through collective rules. As long as rest is seen as a sign of disengagement, workers will keep sacrificing their weekends to protect their careers, and organizations will keep harvesting burnout instead of loyalty.