How to Set Boundaries at Work
Five tips on how to set boundaries with your colleagues and customers so you can take care of your wellbeing.
Self employment lets me enforce my professional and personal boundaries in a way that aligns with my needs and values. Fortunately, I learned a thing or two about setting boundaries at work while I was working full time.
Project deadlines, end of quarter financial targets, and customer expectations are stressors that make up an average day for workers. If we’re not careful, these external pressures can take over and we end up giving away our time and wellbeing.
Busy times are going to happen. Your job is to support your employer’s goals by fulfilling your job responsibilities and following their rules. But that doesn’t mean your employer, colleagues, or even customers should take advantage of your willingness to help.
Establishing and enforcing your boundaries means that you can be more productive on the things that matter most, without burning out. If your employer ignores your mental health needs, they’re harming the business as a whole.
Protecting boundaries with customers
Working with customers, whether you’re a salesperson, a customer service rep, or a cashier requires a high level of patience. Most customers are perfectly fine to deal with but there are always a few who want more from you than you can (or should) give.
My experience in software sales taught me how to balance customer demands against my employer’s best interests. This is why many sales people are actually quite good at holding their line when negotiating with customers.
Problems arise when your company doesn’t back you up when dealing with terrible customers. If a customer yells at you, swears at you, or otherwise degrades you while you are trying to do your job, it’s the company’s responsibility to protect you.
Your boss must empower you to say, “Customer, if you continue to speak to me this way, I will hang up the phone. When you’re ready to work together to solve your problem, I’ll be happy to help.” And if the customer is still difficult, your boss must be ready to back you up, not just appease the customer.
In my experience, very few customers are outright horrible people. But there are plenty of difficult ones. They may feel strongly about what they want included in their contract and it was my job to tell them no, when appropriate. It was infinitely easier if my manager helped.
Whose side is your employer on?
Unfortunately, some businesses prefer to give in to customers, rather than assert boundaries, and work quickly becomes emotionally taxing for everyone. Allowing customers to be rude to employees or not pay their bills on time has a cost – and the employee is often the one who pays.
If a customer ignores overdue bills for 30, 60 or even 120 days, some companies will claw back the commission from the sales team, putting sales reps in financial stress. What should happen is that your company should hold customers accountable to their contract, even if it means ceasing service temporarily.
Conversely, your bosses can also make it hard to do the right thing for your customers. At a past company, I had to convert my customers' annual subscription contracts to a new payment model. I wasn’t allowed to move forward with the customer in any other way, even if they refused the new contract. The company was only looking out for itself.
Good leaders don’t set rigid rules and processes and throw you in the deep end of the pool. They let employees work in a way that respects their wellbeing and, especially, their ethical codes. By pitting me against my customer, this employer disregarded my professional boundaries.
Establishing boundaries with colleagues
I’ve worked with amazing teammates over the years and we were happy to help each other out when asked. However, this becomes a problem when your peers come to rely on you to do their job for them. Without boundaries, you may end up as the team work horse.
If you’re so overwhelmed that you can’t do your best on your actual job responsibilities, you may get in hot water for poor performance, even though you’re working so hard. Doing your job well means you have to set limits. Don’t expect your manager, your teammates, and your customers to respect boundaries that you never communicated.
Saying yes to every request at work won’t help you get the recognition, promotions, and pay increases that you need. That’s outdated advice. Your performance in your actual responsibilities may suffer as you take on too much. Alternatively, you might end up stuck in your current position because you’re too valuable to your manager’s success.
5 tips for setting personal boundaries at work
It’s important to know your own boundaries. At the end of the day, no one is looking out for your wellbeing but yourself. It’s possible to balance to help out your team while still standing up for yourself.
Your limits are unique to you. perhaps you have no problem starting work at 7 am because you’re a morning person. That's fine, but set a rule that you leave the office at 4 pm, even if everyone else stays until 6 pm (who came in at 9 am).
Here are five steps to determine and establish your boundaries:
Start by noticing who respects your time – and who doesn’t
When I worked in customer success, I worked alongside account executives, sometimes more than ten at a time. Some of them were great partners and we supported each other on our way to joint success. Others would push their work onto my plate and disappear, leaving me to hold the bag.
To get your bearings, note the customers, colleagues, and managers that are offloading their responsibilities onto you. When a manager asks you to put together a report that their director needs ASAP, ask yourself:
Is this really in my job description?
Why am I being asked for this so last minute?
Could my manager be pushing their work on to me?
How often has this manager made this request?
List your goals, both professional and personal
What are you giving up to meet deadlines at work? Do you often skip happy hours and dinners with friends? Are you seeing your children as much as you want? When was the last time you took a vacation or any time off? What hobbies are collecting dust because you’re too tired from work?
Next, set your personal goals, things that are important to you and that you can achieve once you have boundaries at work. Perhaps you want to pick up your kids after school every day. Maybe you want to get home in time to make dinner with your partner. Or you might want to exercise more and use your lunch hour to hit the gym.
If you want a promotion at your job or you’re seeking certifications that can help you professionally, make time for the work that will get you to these goals.
If you’re a sales rep, prioritize internal meetings that help you move a sale forward over informational meetings. If you’re a customer service rep, focus on hitting your KPIs and tell your manager that you can’t mentor every new hire on the team.
From there it’s easy to know where the boundary line is, for example:
Ignoring your emails and phone while you cook dinner.
Blocking out your lunch hour everyday to attend a workout class at the gym.
Leaving at 4 pm everyday to pick up your kids from school.
Declining meetings that aren’t mandatory, like “lunch & learn” sessions.
Refusing extra assignments because you are studying for a certification this quarter.
Communicate your new boundaries to your manager
Any good manager will be happy to hear that you are setting boundaries so you can be more effective and productive. Make sure that they know what you’re prioritizing and when they can expect completion. Your manager may ask you to move priorities around and that’s fine as long as they respect your hard boundaries.
Next, communicate your boundaries to your colleagues. If a colleague sends you an email saying that they urgently need a report for a call they have tomorrow morning, tell them that you will try to get to it today, but realistically, you won’t be able to meet that deadline because of other commitments.
Oftentimes, they’ll figure it out on their own or, perhaps, find that their need isn’t as urgent as they thought.
Practice delaying your response and saying no
Just because someone says they have an emergency, it doesn’t mean they can interrupt your already busy day. Practice delaying responses to emails and other notifications. If you’re busy with a task or speaking with a client, their email can wait until you’re done.
I always block out my calendar for completing tasks,. If I need to research a topic for an article, I’ll block out one or two hours in my day, so if a client wants to book time with me, they’ll see that I’m unavailable. It also helps me stay focused and not be distracted. If something is truly important and urgent, I’ll figure out how to accommodate it.
Sometimes the answer is simply, no. You don’t have the time, ability, or it simply is not your responsibility. It’s easier to say no when you wait to respond and evaluate your workload. This avoids putting you in a situation where you’ve already agreed only to be overwhelmed later.
Prepare emotionally for pushback
Saying no to someone’s request because it’s not your responsibility, the timeline is unrealistic, or you have personal commitments to attend to, can cause some static. But don’t worry, you can hold to your boundaries and build trust at the same time.
Avoid saying no without an explanation. That can be received the wrong way in an office setting, especially if the person doesn’t know you that well. It’s totally fine to explain why you’re saying no, just stick to your decision. If you have a dinner date at 6 pm and someone asks you to stay late today, simply tell them that you have a commitment and that you can help them tomorrow. You don’t need to justify further.
If someone is asking you to do something that’s really not your job, tell them no while offering another solution. You can point them to another team that specializes in that task or send them online how-to documentation. They can learn how to solve their own problem with the right resources.
You can do it!
It may seem like you don’t have a choice sometimes but that’s not true. Most people will respect your boundaries and even offer to help you get out of the office early when you have other commitments. In general, people are kind, compassionate, and want to make the world a better place.
If you find yourself in a job where your boundaries are repeatedly crossed, and you’ve tried to make it work to no avail, you’re not going to be happy and productive at that job. If possible, start looking for something new.
At the end of the day, treating employees and their autonomy with respect isn’t just a “nice thing” employers can do – it’s the cornerstone of a successful business.