Is it okay to WhatsApp my team out of hours?

It's 11pm. You finished lunch service at 5pm and now you're dozing on the sofa, halfway through something on Netflix, when your phone lights up. It's the team WhatsApp. Someone's asking about tomorrow's prep, someone else has replied with a meme, your sous chef is chasing a shift swap... You didn’t really want to look, but yesterday someone took a picture of the dry stores in the wrong order, and you know that was you. What if it’s about you again? You can’t help taking a peek, and just like that your now-buzzing brain is back at work. Say goodbye to a good night's sleep.

If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. WhatsApp is the unofficial operating system of the hospitality industry: it’s free, it's instant, everyone already has it, and it has quietly woven itself into every corner of how we run restaurants, bars, and hotels. The numbers bear thist out. According to Quinyx's 2024 State of the Frontline Workforce study, which surveyed nearly 3,000 UK frontline employees, three in four hospitality workers (75%) report being contacted by their bosses on personal social media platforms like WhatsApp — a higher rate than in any other sector. Not retail, not finance, not medicine. Hospitality leads the way.

But just because we can message our teams at any hour of the day or night, should we?

How WhatsApp Hooked Us

The read receipts (those little blue ticks) mean managers can see who's received a message (and even if those pesky ticks are turned off, group chats still show you who’s seen the message). Voice notes let a chef fire off instructions while their hands are covered in flour. Slack requires yet another app to be downloaded onto your phone, yet another format to get your head around. And unlike email, which research suggests only around 55% of UK workers use regularly for internal communication, WhatsApp feels immediate, informal, familiar and human.

For a fast-moving, people-driven industry, that speed and accessibility is genuinely valuable - and the workplace-specific tech alternatives too often fail in implementation and willing. It would be naive to pretend otherwise.

When 'always on' becomes 'always overwhelmed'

This convenience comes with a cost, and it's one the industry is only just beginning to reckon with.

The same Quinyx study found that 95% of hospitality employees are unable to switch off when they get home.Hospitality is, by definition, a job you can only do inside the workplace — you can't pour a pint or plate a dish from your sofa. And yet almost every single person working in the sector is taking work home with them in their heads, on their phones, or both. Nearly half (49%) say the job has negatively affected their physical or mental health.

"Not working makes us better at working," says Madeleine Geach, a leadership and wellbeing coach who works extensively with hospitality businesses through The Good Life Coaching. "It may sound counterintuitive, but switching off work leads to better results for us as people and for the businesses we run or work in."

The science backs her up. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for planning, problem-solving, strategising, and staying calm under pressure, operates like a battery with finite capacity. As Geach explains: "It needs to be recharged daily to build up its stores. If we don't switch off work when we are not there and if we don't take the time to recharge, our ability to work well is, quite simply, shot."

A study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found that simply expecting to monitor work messages outside of hours significantly increases stress and emotional exhaustion, even when no messages actually arrive. It's not the ping itself that's the problem, it's knowing the ping could come at any moment. 

If this sounds snowflake-y in an industry which notoriously values resilience, take a moment to think about how working requirements have changed over the last decade. The data on digital burnout more broadly is stark; according to a 2025 survey of workplace communication trends, 60% of workers said digital communication makes them feel more burned out, and even on-site staff — the people who should, in theory, be able to leave work at the door — reported digital burnout rates of 49%. 

WhatsApp, by its very design, amplifies all of this. It lives on your personal phone, and it doesn't know the difference between your sister’s catsitting group and your kitchen team's prep list. The notifications are the same. The interface is the same. As one worker put it, in an account that went viral online after being added to a WhatsApp group on their second day without being asked: "Everything exists in one endless scroll with zero distinction between 'read this now' and 'lol check out this TikTok.'" And they describe an additional stress: "So now every single person at this store has my personal phone number whether I wanted that or not."

That same worker painted a picture many hospitality staff will recognise: shift swap requests, someone's kid's fundraiser link, and an actual important policy change buried 50 messages deep that they missed. And somehow that's their fault. Their summary? Zero separation between personal life and a job.

There is no off switch, and that's by design... just not your design. So it's your task to take the control back.

'Always on' in an industry that never sleeps

Geach frames this through a concept gaining traction around the world: the Right to Disconnect. "The Right to Disconnect means that every employee is able to switch off outside of their normal working hours and enjoy their free time away from work without being disturbed, unless there is an emergency," she says. "It has been proposed as a human right, and has been made a legal right in many countries."

Countries such as France and Ireland already have formal frameworks in place. Australia introduced its own right-to-disconnect provisions in 2024. In the UK, the government initially planned to legislate for a right to switch off as part of its Employment Rights Bill, but subsequently U-turned, opting instead to ask companies to establish their own codes of practice. The broader Employment Rights Act 2025 signals a shift toward greater employee protections, but on disconnecting specifically, the onus now falls on individual businesses.

Toma Pagojute, Chief HR Officer at Quinyx, has warned that this could be particularly damaging for hospitality. "My concern is that it will be too easy for businesses to let standards slide, especially in a high-tempo industry like hospitality," she said. "WhatsApp and other social media might be quick and easy for work conversations, but work/life boundaries become blurred, so it's not surprising hospitality staff are finding switching off difficult. Plus, there are data protection implications for employers to consider." Staff see work messages on their days off. Notifications arrive at midnight. And when someone leaves the business, the chat history — including potentially sensitive operational information — walks out the door on their personal phone.

Her warning is pointed: "The hospitality sector often operates at breakneck speed and staff give their all when at work. Without cast-iron frameworks to ensure uninterrupted time off, there's the real danger of physical and mental ill-health as a consequence — or staff will quit."

So what do we do about it?

This isn't a piece arguing you should delete WhatsApp tomorrow. That's not realistic, and that's not the point. The point is about boundaries, which means being intentional with how and when we communicate, rather than letting the tool dictate the terms. Geach offers practical advice for individuals first: 

"As one leader I worked with recently put it, we need to know how to how to 'clock off and f*ck off.'"

Her strategies for switching off include planning the next day in your final 15 minutes at work so you don't carry concerns home; turning off notifications and putting your phone in a different room; handing over properly so you can walk away knowing your team is fully briefed; and developing a personal switch-off ritual. "For one of my clients it's doing a puzzle on the journey home," she says. "For another it's putting their headphones on and playing some Billy Joel. Having the same action you take every time you leave work sends a signal to your brain that work is over."

The comms policy that changes everything

Individual strategies will only go so far if the business itself is part of the problem. This is where Geach's advice gets really pointed, and deals with a situation that most of us will recognise: "The biggest threat to people being able to switch off work across the industry is the volume of emails and instant messaging they are receiving outside of their working hours," she says. "So the first most important thing a business can do to help their teams switch off is to have, and communicate, a basic comms policy."

This doesn't need to be complicated. Geach suggests that businesses consider encouraging scheduled sends so people aren't being messaged during downtime, she encourages that businesses mandate out-of-office messages so people can signal when they're unavailable, and she suggests defining what actually constitutes an emergency and how emergency messages should be sent. She even asks that we consider a communications blackout day - perhaps a day the restaurant is closed, when no team messages are sent at all.

"Tips on managing instant messaging groups are important too," she adds, "such as keeping them in archive so you can check them regularly during work hours, but they are not vying for your attention when you are off work."

Research from Harvard Business Review supports the urgency of this kind of policy: employees who feel obligated to respond to work communications after hours experience a measurable drop in productivity the following day. The 'always-on' expectation doesn't just harm wellbeing, it actively undermines the performance it's supposed to enable.

The bigger picture

None of this is about caring less. As Geach puts it: "Switching off work is not about caring less or abdicating responsibility. It's about having healthy boundaries so people can recharge and be at their best for their teams and businesses tomorrow."

In an industry battling chronic staff shortages and a retention crisis that shows no sign of easing, the way we communicate with our teams isn't a minor operational detail. It's a fundamental part of whether people stay, whether they thrive, and whether they can do their best work. When the Quinyx research tells us that half of hospitality workers have recently considered leaving their jobs, and that nearly half say the work has harmed their health, the connection between an always-buzzing WhatsApp group and an always-depleted workforce starts to look less like coincidence and more like cause and effect.

Of the 95% of hospitality staff who say they think about work when off-shift, nearly half spend that time mulling over how they can improve their performance or help their company. These aren't disengaged people. They're people who care deeply — and that's precisely why they need protecting from a culture that exploits that care around the clock.

WhatsApp isn't going anywhere. But the culture of round-the-clock messaging that's grown up around it doesn't have to be permanent. With a clear comms policy, some simple boundaries, and a genuine commitment to letting people switch off, hospitality businesses can keep the speed and convenience of instant messaging without sacrificing the wellbeing of the people who make everything run.

It's probably unrealistic to ask the industry to delete WhatsApp. That ship has very much sailed. But you should ask yourself: is that 11pm message on a Tuesday actually for your team, or is it for you? Sending it might clear your head, but it fills someone else's. There are better systems: scheduled sends, proper handover notes, and comms policies that distinguish between what's urgent and what can wait. They're less immediately gratifying than the instant ping, but they build something a midnight voice note never will: a team that's actually rested, actually focused, and not quietly looking for the door.

Madeleine Geach is the founder of The Good Life Coaching, working with hospitality leaders and businesses on wellbeing, leadership, and sustainable workplace culture. For more information visit thegoodlifecoaching.co.uk.