Workplace Boundaries Aren't a Willpower Problem

Eleven o'clock at night, and your phone buzzes.

You don't even need to look — it's the company WhatsApp group. The boss has forwarded a news link, with a one-liner: "Have a read, everyone, relevant to what we discussed at this morning's meeting." You sigh and think to yourself: "Couldn't this wait?" Then you see the colleagues are already replying: "Got it!" "Sounds good 👍".

So you type "Got it" too, put the phone down — and find you've already started thinking about tomorrow's agenda.

This isn't overtime. This is your life being soaked through by work, and you can't even pinpoint where the boundary disappeared.

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When "we're all one team" turns into a kind of pressure

A lot of people assume blurry workplace boundaries are a personal failing — "you just don't know how to say no." But research tells us this is actually structural.

In cultures with high power distance, subordinates tend to accept an unequal relationship with those above them. Asian countries score consistently high on Hofstede's power distance index, and Hong Kong's workplace culture is even more deeply shaped by this tradition (Hofstede, 2001). It's not that you're weak — it's that the whole system is telling you: "don't make a fuss," "the boss is still working, what gives you the right to clock off?"

A survey of 486 doctors and nurses at a Singapore public hospital found that nearly 95% had witnessed inappropriate behaviour over the past year — including condescending remarks and emotional outbursts from those higher up — yet only 12.6% believed their institution had a meaningful policy in place to address it (Lim et al., 2022). The researchers noted: "Differences in status and power distort a person's judgement of what behaviour is acceptable, and amplify the fear of retaliation for speaking up about problems."

In other words, it's not that you don't want to set boundaries. It's that the environment you're in has turned setting a boundary into something that takes courage.

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You are not their therapist

Blurred boundaries don't only show up between you and the people above you. They cross lines between colleagues too — especially emotional lines.

Have you ever experienced this: a colleague who pours out their family problems to you every lunchtime, and you can't bear to cut them off; or another colleague who treats you as a punching bag, coming to you to complain every time the boss has told them off?

The sociologist Hochschild (1983) introduced the concept of emotional labour: when your job requires you to manage your own emotions to meet the expectations of your environment, that in itself is a form of depletion. She distinguished two modes — "surface acting" is when you're unhappy but force a smile; "deep acting" is when you actually try to make yourself feel the emotion you're being asked to show.

A study of 25 emergency 911 dispatchers found that the degree of surface acting was positively correlated with post-traumatic stress symptoms (r = 0.57) — that is, the more people suppressed their true emotions, the more pronounced the signs of psychological trauma (Birze et al., 2020). The sample was small, but the direction is clear: your body is footing the bill for your pretending.

And when you take on a colleague's emotional needs in the workplace — what Hochschild calls "emotion work," as distinct from the emotional labour the role itself demands — you're actually depleting yourself in a role nobody has acknowledged. You are not their therapist, but you've been placed in that position.

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The cost of being always on

"Have you ever truly switched off after clocking out?"

If the answer is no, you're not alone. A 2020 Cigna survey found that roughly 70 to 80% of Hong Kong workers felt they were in an "always on" state, unable to genuinely detach from work (Cigna, 2020). Kisi's 2022 global ranking went further, listing Hong Kong as the second "most overworked" city, and a City Mental Health Alliance survey showed that more than a quarter of Hong Kong employees reported work-related mental health problems (CMHA HK, 2020).

A study covering 315 full-time employees in the United States found that after-hours work communication was linked to emotional exhaustion, and that emotional exhaustion in turn was linked to negative work behaviours — including making disparaging remarks about the company and disengaging (Kim & Chon, 2022).

The problem isn't just "having to reply to that message." Psychologists point out that simply "anticipating that you might need to reply" is enough to raise your stress levels, even if no message ever arrives in the end. Your brain can't relax, because it's constantly on standby.

In their boundary theory, Ashforth, Kreiner and Fugate (2000) proposed that everyone has a boundary between work and life, and that this boundary has two properties: flexibility (how much it can stretch to accommodate the demands of different domains) and permeability (how much can pass through it). The problem with the WhatsApp group is precisely this — it makes your boundary extremely permeable. Work messages can pass into your private space at any time, and you have no clear mechanism to keep them out.

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It's not a question of willpower, it's a question of fit

Here's a research finding many people don't know: there is no "correct" way to manage boundaries.

Kreiner's (2006) study surveyed 325 employees across different industries and found that what mattered most for stress, work-family conflict and job satisfaction wasn't just how "firm" your boundary was — more important was whether your preferences and your environment were a match.

Some people are naturally inclined to keep work and life completely separate (high segmentation); others find it natural to blend the two together (high integration). Neither is a problem. But if you're someone who prefers high segmentation, yet you're trapped in an environment that expects you to reply at any hour, attend team activities at weekends, and treat your colleagues like family — that discomfort isn't you being too fussy; it's a mismatch between person and environment.

Maslach and Leiter's (2016) research also bears this out: the root of burnout lies not in the individual, but in the "mismatch" between the person and their work environment. They identified six key areas: workload, sense of control, reward, community, fairness and values. When several of these fall out of alignment, burnout is almost an inevitable outcome.

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So what can I do?

Recognise one thing: setting a boundary isn't building a wall.

A boundary is a filter — it lets you choose what comes in and what to keep out. And in the workplace, this usually has to begin with the smallest of moves:

First, get clear on your own preferences. Are you someone who needs to switch off completely after work, or are you fine dealing with the occasional work message? There's no standard answer, but you need to know where you stand.

Find a manageable starting point. Not quitting every WhatsApp group tomorrow, but perhaps starting by turning off notifications, setting a "no-reply window," or — the next time someone asks you to do something beyond your remit — practising the line "I need some time to think about it."

Understand the limits of your environment. In a high power distance culture, directly refusing your boss can genuinely carry risk at times. But a boundary doesn't always have to be expressed with a "no" — sometimes it's expressed with a question: "What's the priority on this?" "Which item would you like me to set aside first?"

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In closing

That eleven o'clock message — you'll probably still reply to it.

But at least now you know: that uncomfortable feeling isn't you being too sensitive, nor a sign you're not committed enough. It's your body telling you that something has passed through a place it shouldn't have.

A boundary doesn't need to be set up at the top of your voice. But it does need you to acknowledge, first: that you're entitled to have one.

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Struggling to set workplace boundaries? Perhaps you need one round of systematic practice

If you've finished reading this article and you feel "I understand all of it in principle, I just can't do it" — that's perfectly normal. Knowing that boundaries matter is one thing; practising setting them amid real power dynamics and interpersonal pressure is something else entirely.

TreeholeHK's "Personal Boundaries" workshop uses psychological principles to take you from understanding your own boundary preferences through to actually rehearsing how to express your needs across different relationships — including the workplace situations that are hardest to speak up in.

Find out more about the "Personal Boundaries" workshop

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Key takeaways

When you can't hold your workplace boundaries, more often than not it isn't a personal failing — it's environmental structure. Power distance, an always-on culture, the lack of clear role boundaries — these turn setting a boundary into something that takes extra effort. The most effective starting point isn't learning to say "no," but first getting clear on how much separation you yourself need, and then, within a manageable range, adjusting the distance between you and work little by little.

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Further reading

Workplace boundaries are just one facet of interpersonal boundaries. If you'd like to understand boundaries from a more comprehensive angle, you can read: The psychology of boundaries — the complete approach to setting boundaries

Boundary problems don't only show up in the office. In intimate relationships, the harm that blurred boundaries brings is often deeper: Loving until you lose yourself: why do partners need boundaries between them?

References

Ashforth, B. E., Kreiner, G. E., & Fugate, M. (2000). All in a day’s work: Boundaries and micro role transitions. Academy of Management Review, 25(3), 472–491. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2000.3363315

Birze, A., LeBlanc, V., Regehr, C., Paradis, E., & Einstein, G. (2020). The “managed” or damaged heart? Emotional labor, gender, and posttraumatic stressors predict workplace event-related acute changes in cortisol, oxytocin, and heart rate variability. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 604. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00604

Cigna. (2020). COVID-19 global impact study. Cigna International Markets.

City Mental Health Alliance Hong Kong & Oliver Wyman. (2020). Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace survey. CMHA HK.

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Sage Publications.

Kim, K. H., & Chon, M.-G. (2022). When work and life boundaries are blurred: The effect of after-hours work communication through communication technology on employee outcomes. Journal of Communication Management, 26(4), 401–420. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCOM-06-2022-0073

Kisi. (2022). Work-life balance index 2022. Kisi.

Kreiner, G. E. (2006). Consequences of work-home segmentation or integration: A person-environment fit perspective. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(4), 485–507. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.386

Lim, S. G., Goh, A. M. J., Tay, E. Y., Tong, H. J., Chung, Y. W., Devi, M. K., Tan, Y. Y., & Raja Indran, T. (2022). Disruptive behavior in a high-power distance culture and a three-dimensional framework for curbing it. Health Care Management Review, 47(2), 133–143. https://doi.org/10.1097/HMR.0000000000000315

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: Recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry, 15(2), 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20311