Is It Okay to Call a Female Employee at Night About Missed Deadlines? How to Handle It Right

Is It Appropriate to Call a Female Employee at Night?

Is making a call to a female employee at night wrong, especially if she has missed one of her deliverables? Why? How should it be handled properly to avoid such situations in the future?

Please provide your valuable suggestions in this regard.

Why Can't the Company Handle Performance-Related Issues During Normal Working Hours?

It is inappropriate to contact female or other employees during the night (non-office hours) for work and performance-related matters unless the situation is urgent and failure to address it immediately could lead to significant losses in terms of revenue, opportunities, or credibility. Let us maintain a clear distinction between personal and professional boundaries to uphold individuals' privacy and the organization's dignity.

Regards,
Samvedan

Handling Calls to Female Employees at Night

Is it wrong to call a female employee at night, especially if she has missed one of her deliverables? Why? How should such situations be handled appropriately to prevent them in the future? Please share your valuable suggestions on this matter.

Handling Performance Issues During Non-Office Hours

Why can't the company handle performance-related issues (deliverables, as you call it) during normal working hours? It is WRONG to contact female or other employees during the night (non-office hours) for work and performance-related matters UNLESS the issues are so critical that not addressing them immediately may lead to significant loss in terms of revenue, opportunities, or credibility for the organization. Let's maintain a clear separation between personal and professional zones to honor someone's privacy and the organization's dignity.

Regards,
Samvedan
July 15, 2012

It is not appropriate to call any female employee or other office staff at night. After office hours, nobody should be disturbed as they have their personal lives. Personal and professional lives should be kept separate. As a female employee myself, I also do not appreciate being called at night. Office matters should only be addressed during working hours unless it is extremely urgent and requires immediate attention.

Regards,
Simone Joshi

I agree that it's the onus of the management to try and ensure that the professional and personal are well segregated. However, it's a two-way road. Part of the responsibilities lie in the hands of the employees as well. So I don't see a reason why an employee should not be called at night, be it male or female, when he/she fails to deliver their responsibilities during working hours.

Having said that, I would maintain that calling employees after the shift hours should not be made a practice and must be done during urgent situations only. The best way to speak to a female employee at night would be by keeping the call to the point and by being businesslike. Stick to the point and keep the call precise. I would suggest apologizing for disturbing during unsocial hours.

It is always advisable to avoid calling a female employee at night, even in connection with office work. However, when someone, whether male or female, agrees to undertake a key responsible position characterized by time-bound deliverable services in an organization, it is an implied obligation on the part of such an employee to make himself or herself available to respond to the demands of the organization. This is because the responsibilities and business contingencies, urgencies, and expediencies that may surface without prior notice in a competitive business environment do not distinguish between male and female employees. After all, the organization compensates them with the package negotiated for fulfilling such obligations. I am concerned whether such situations can be entirely avoided in the modern globalized business environment with pan-world business commitments.

Handling Night Calls to Female Employees

The question is how to handle such situations when it is imperative to call a female employee at night. I am not discussing an ideal situation (which is not to call a female employee at night) but a practical situation.

Regards,
B. Saikumar
HR & Labour Law Advisor
Mumbai

I wonder why this question is repeated after the excellent advice by Samvedan. So, let me raise some questions to get the situation clarified before replying.

Clarifying the Situation

Why can't the organization question the worker before she or he goes home? What is the nature of the call? For example, is it to find out where a certain file is or when the work will be completed to answer some customer query? It's possible that sometimes, in global operations, the customer is on the opposite side of the world, and in order to answer the query, one may have to be disturbed.

As the scenario is not clear or complete, it's difficult to give a concrete reply. One suggestion, to avoid being called at night, is for the worker to leave a clear log on her/his table indicating when the work is likely to be finished and why there is a delay in meeting the deadline.

I agree with my friends that official matters should be dealt with during office hours. In this particular case, when an employee has not met the deadline, it is the responsibility of the reporting manager to track it so that such a situation never arises.

Importance of Managing Deadlines

I think if an organization works with strict deadlines, then it MUST have a review of work on a daily basis so that its employees can sort out all the issues during office hours instead of carrying the tension home.

The Importance of Respecting After-Hours Boundaries

It is quite an interesting discussion, and your opinions are required in huge numbers!

• Nowadays, any employee, whether male or female, is not interested in attending a call after working hours from their office. The office culture should respect this by not disturbing any employee after working hours. An atmosphere should be created where the office only contacts employees if there is a very urgent and unavoidable situation.

• The timings of global working hours should be circulated to everyone around the world, especially if it is an MNC. This way, calls after working hours can be avoided.

• If a female employee, as our discussion started, is in a superior position and involved in decision-making, office personnel may call her at any time, even at night, in emergencies. The responsibility itself authorizes her to be contacted at any time. Many HR professionals face situations where, at midnight, office security personnel or others call to make decisions on emergency situations on-site.

• Last but not least, we depend on the organization to fulfill our needs in terms of salary. Therefore, every employee holds some responsibility for their office even after hours. Personal needs will be satisfied only when we satisfy our office's needs. If we are unable to attend a single telephone call after office hours, what is the need for our management to provide satisfaction (such as children welfare, family welfare, etc.)? There should be no gender difference in this regard, so why create one? Regardless of the situation, the person making a call after working hours should handle the situation politely without hurting the employee.

With best regards,

Suneelkumar Gudipati

Well, I have read all the responses that have been posted here. Although I am not in favor of disturbing any employee—whether it's post office hours, weekends, holidays, etc.—for those who are absolutely against calling up employees post office hours, just one question: Don't we take our personal calls during office hours?

In today's modern work culture, which is heavily influenced by technology, the boundaries between personal and professional lives have diluted a lot. If employees can attend personal calls during office (pertaining to some urgency at home/personal life), why is it so wrong to call people post office hours in case of any issues at work?

Again, it's a topic that can have quite a few diverse opinions, and the key thing to be accounted for is the reason why the office had to resort to making a call to an employee post office hours.

Regards,
Ankush

Nowadays, office hours do get extended beyond the normal working hours. This entirely depends on the level at which the person is working. Companies provide mobile phones, internet connections, laptops, etc. Sometimes, by virtue of the position being handled, if the person is expected to reply to the management with the status of the assignment, then calling during the night is a normal practice.

I think the above issue might relate to some petty office chores like finding a file, questioning why an email was not sent, or why a cheque was not couriered today. These reasons are trivial, and calling a person for such matters late at night, disrupting their family life, is unnecessary. If a task is not completed by the evening, it can always be done the next morning.

Regards,
Prakash

I can make one suggestion which I follow: you can send a text message rather than making a call. The concerned person can respond either by calling back or replying with a text message.

Very good reply, Mr. Samvedan. This approach should be followed to respect individuals. 

Regards,
Ramkishore

There are two questions to be answered:

Should We Call an Employee After Office Hours?

Ideally, no, but as pointed out by Ankush, we do entertain our personal calls during office hours. So unless the reply is going to be an immediate solution, yes, the employee should be ready to take the call as part of their work ownership. The call should be placed at a decent hour. Also, check if the time is good to talk and finally keep it to the point and short.

What to Do When an Employee Fails to Deliver During the Stipulated Time?

Create a mechanism to ensure that a work matrix is created for A, B, C types of jobs. "A" - very urgent, needs completion ASAP or by the end of the day. "B" - important but not so urgent, has a deadline attached, and will shortly be an "A" type. "C" - ongoing, routine, or a long assignment that can be broken into various small deadlines which are tracked every day. Before an employee leaves, they need to update their seniors and take their consensus on the completion stage. Sounds ideal but difficult to implement as not everything and every time will work as planned. So create a realistic matrix giving significance to bottlenecks like sickness, meetings, any other important work, etc.

I would like to quote an example from my time management training where the busiest department of my organization - the Accounts team - was able to identify two hours of time wasters. Try and identify time wasters for your team and work on them. No work should stretch beyond our normal working hours, as identified by many researches.

All the best.

Regards

I think Sunil Kumar, Ankush, and Jhuma have put the issue in proper perspective, keeping in tune with the modern business environment where women too shoulder key responsibilities and hold decision-making positions that have considerable bearing on the business of the organization. The modern working women also understand this contingency and respond positively. However, calls for routine matters or an excuse for indulging in gossip shall be strictly avoided.

Regards,
B. Saikumar
HR & Labour Law Advisor
Mumbai

Even though the whole society talks about equality and equal rights for men and women, in practice, it is very difficult to follow, especially regarding the current subject we are discussing. The best approach, as rightly mentioned by Saikumar and other friends, is to call female employees only in emergencies, and the reasons for such calls should be classifiable.

Thanks,
Prabhakar

The question was raised again because it was incomplete, although the answer was correct. However, I would like to reiterate: what if the individual didn't perform his/her duties and left the office without completing them, and it's one of the important daily deliverables that need to be sent to the client?

We work in the BPO industry, and many times we see that individuals are more concerned about completing their shift timings instead of finishing their work. The example you have mentioned could be a simple one, but there are many other instances where, as supervisors/leads, we are reliant on them. Therefore, it becomes necessary to contact them regardless of their shift timings.

Your suggestion is really good and can be implemented. If you have any further suggestions, please advise and share them with us.

Last but not least, I also agree that calling any employee at night is not justified. However, there are many occasions on which individuals fail to complete their tasks and simply provide the excuse of "forgetting" it. I appreciate everyone for their valuable advice and opinions on this matter.

Regards

Has the worker complained about receiving calls at night? The sex of the worker is immaterial in the days of sex equality.

It all depends on how serious the effect of not finishing the work is and how valuable the worker is. If the worker keeps repeating the same thing, then give her a written warning and replace her if possible; also, assign her some other work that is not critical. You are the best judge of the situation, as we are not privy to all the details.

Let's look at it another way. Is it not the responsibility of the manager or the boss to ensure that work is completed during working hours instead of contacting employees after working hours? Instead of questioning the employee after they have left the office about why the work was not finished, the manager should ask themselves if they have been successful in their position where they are unable to delegate work effectively to their team. If the manager is unable to have the work completed by their team within the designated time frame, it raises the question of their competence to hold that position, leading them to resort to contacting their team after office hours.

Regards,
Poonam

Dear Poonam,

I do not know what position you hold or have held. As a Senior Lecturer, I had the freedom to teach, set assignments, mark, etc. My Faculty Dean did not check how I did my work. I had the liberty not even to go to my university when I did not have a class to teach. However, I was expected and duty-bound to do my work diligently and on time so that my Dean did not receive any complaints from my students or colleagues.

Thus, do not expect the boss to keep prodding a worker in the back all the time to get the work done. In some cases, the span of control is large, and it is unrealistic to expect the boss to have a daily meeting with all the staff before they go home to check the progress of the work.

Corporate life is incredibly competitive, and sometimes work goes on 24/7 in global dealings. Your late night may be working time in a foreign country. An employee (male or female) should be accessible at all times in case of urgency, which involves urgent company matters. The likelihood of people being called at odd hours should be made a key term for certain positions. If the deliverable is of such importance and does not brook delay, then you can call the concerned person. However, the concerned person themselves should have been monitoring the position of the deliverable if it was all that vital.

Having said this, there has to be a healthy segregation of personal time and professional time. As a matter of fact, government employees are supposed to be on call 24 hours.

Personally, I would avoid calling people at odd times if it can be avoided without damage to the organization.

I agree with Simon, Jothi, and Samvedan. Everyone has the responsibility to manage both personal and office work. Office duties should not encroach upon personal time. It's essential to allow employees to focus undisturbed after their working hours.

Thank you.

Well said, Mr. Nathrao. What is it with focusing solely on females? It's just boring. Kindly, let's not concentrate only on females; both males and females have equal rights. Got it? Now, let's concentrate on the problem.

Professional Communication with Employees

A call to any employee is acceptable if it is a business or professional call related to the urgency of that particular employee only.

Whenever someone mentions a "FEMALE EMPLOYEE," everyone rushes to solve the problem, resulting in numerous views and replies. Be professional, guys!

Regards

See, it is such that whether male or female, no one would like to be disturbed at night unless there is an emergency. So, make sure whenever you want to make a call at night, give it a second thought and see if the work to be done is really urgent. If yes, then go ahead with the call (irrespective of whether it is a male or female employee); otherwise, wait for the next day to arise.