Employees who struggle to detach from their jobs outside established hours are experiencing what experts call bubble worker syndrome. Specialists warn that this condition occurs when individuals continue to monitor their corporate emails, reply to messages, and review tasks even after leaving the office or turning off their computers.
The syndrome appears when constant connection to work invades time meant for rest, leisure, and personal life. Experts from Cigna Healthcare, a medical insurer specializing in the corporate sector, said the phenomenon reflects the blurring of boundaries between an employee's professional and personal lives.
The insurer said this sensation of permanent connection to work can take many different forms, including compulsively checking corporate email. Cigna explained that when replying to an email during a vacation, taking a work call on a commute, or reviewing a message during a family meal becomes a habit, the brain remains partially connected to the professional environment. This makes it difficult for periods of rest to actually fulfill their function.
Unrecognized syndrome
Amira Bueno, the human resources director for Cigna Healthcare Spain, said one of the main problems with this syndrome is that it is not usually perceived as a problem. Bueno noted that many of the behaviors characterizing the condition are instead rewarded or interpreted as a demonstration of commitment and dedication.
Bueno emphasized that when replying outside of working hours, always being available, or constantly thinking about the job stops being seen as an exception and becomes considered the standard way of working, it is much harder to detect how that dynamic might be influencing a person's wellbeing.
Cigna Healthcare recommended that organizations reduce their level of demand when it causes constant pressure on employees. The insurer said this pressure can push staff to needlessly extend their workday to continually review tasks because of a fear of making errors or a difficulty in considering a project finished.
Rewarding constant availability
The medical insurer also advised companies to analyze which behaviors they reward. The company warned that if replying to emails outside working hours, answering messages during vacations, or always appearing available is interpreted as a sign of an employee's involvement, those behaviors end up becoming normalized within teams.
Cigna advised companies to favor a balanced distribution of responsibilities. The insurer noted that when specific functions or decisions always fall on the same people, those individuals perceive that they must be available at all times.
The company said it is important for an organization to prioritize planning over improvisation. Cigna explained that if daily activity is characterized by constant priority changes or last minute emergencies, it is difficult to distribute the workload in a balanced way. This increases unnecessary pressure on the employee and creates the sensation that everything requires immediate attention.
Cigna stressed that disconnection periods, such as an employee's vacations and days off, must be respected. The company said calls, emails, and messages should be avoided except in exceptional situations. The insurer concluded that these periods should be understood as an opportunity for the person to recover physically and mentally, allowing them to return to work with greater wellbeing.
The out of office problem
Experts at Ommnio, a company specializing in digitizing internal corporate communication, refer to this professional profile as the worker without an out of office option. This refers to people who never use the automatic reply message that an email system sends when the account holder is on vacation, absent, or unavailable to work.
Ommnio described this profile as an employee who attends to emails, calls, and messages outside of their shift and fails to set a boundary between work and rest time. The company noted this happens even during vacations, when the boundary should be clearer than ever.
Anna Quintero, the chief executive of Ommnio, considered that this trend can be favored by a technological ecosystem that glorifies being always on and treats exhaustion like a badge of honor. Quintero pointed out that the impossibility of disconnecting from work and the impulse to communicate constantly with the professional sphere resumes with force in autumn when people return from vacations.
Deskless worker challenges
Quintero said this trend is harder to counteract for frontline workers in the deskless modality. These are employees who carry out their activity outside an office and coordinate with their jobs using their personal mobile phones.
Quintero explained that an office environment has tools and routines designed to delimit the working day, such as corporate email, computers, and identifiable work tools that can be left behind when the shift ends. The situation is different for deskless employees, who use other channels to maintain effective communication because they work away from a desk.
Ommnio explained that shop, logistics, restaurant, industry, maintenance, and direct customer service staff often work variable shifts. The company said they need agile communication to receive notices, shift changes, or operational instructions, and sometimes coordinate with their organizations through WhatsApp on their personal phones.
Quintero explained that for these workers, disconnection does not consist of closing a laptop or activating an automatic email reply. She noted the worker might continue to be part of communication groups that remain active continuously, even when the employee is on vacation.
Quintero said the problem for deskless employees is that they lack a corporate device they can disconnect or put into out of office mode. This means they can remain part of work groups permanently, which hinders them from truly disconnecting.
Protecting personal space
To help deskless workers feel more predisposed to disconnect and make the process easier, Quintero suggested they begin to perceive moments of disconnection as a tool to become more productive at work and improve their performance. She recommended they consider their personal space to be non-negotiable.
Quintero emphasized that when individuals stop being permanently connected to work or the internet, their brains enter a state where memory is consolidated and creativity appears. She noted that many of the best decisions are not made while looking at a computer, but by giving neurons space to rest.
To modify this behavior, the Ommnio chief executive recommended starting with a small change. She suggested dedicating one hour to truly disconnect by taking a walk in a park, and respecting that moment of the day as one would respect a meeting with the most important client.
Quintero concluded that by disconnecting, an individual reunites with themselves, allowing their brain to rest and make better decisions than it would produce while permanently switched on.
