Give the Gift of Boundaries this Season
For many teams, the end of the year is a perfect storm: holidays, open enrollment, fiscal year close, performance reviews, and planning for what’s next. It’s also when burnout and emotional fatigue spike, especially for HR and team leaders.
In a 2024 study, 84% of HR leaders reported frequent stress, 81% felt burned out, and 95% said the job is simply “too much work and stress.” And they’re not alone: broader workforce research shows burnout levels hovering around two-thirds of employees globally.
That’s why boundaries aren’t just a personal wellness strategy, they’re a leadership behavior. When leaders and HR model healthy boundaries, they signal to their teams: You’re allowed to do this too.
Let’s look at four practical boundary behaviors leaders can model this season (and beyond):
- Block your calendar
- Communicate time off clearly
- Say no without guilt
- Define your capacity
1. Block Your Calendar
In many organizations, back-to-back meetings have become a badge of honor, but they’re quietly killing focus and wellbeing.
Harvard researchers have found that the most productive employees actually attend fewer meetings and intentionally protect time for deep work. Other analyses of “meeting overload” show that more than 80% of meetings are perceived as unproductive, draining time and energy without moving real work forward.
For HR and people leaders, that meeting overload often piles on top of emotional labor and crisis management.
How leaders can set the tone:
- Block focus time on your calendar for strategic work, and keep it sacred.
- Reserve family time and personal commitments (school concerts, caregiving, therapy, workouts) as non-negotiable blocks, especially during the holidays.
- Visibly model this behavior so your team can see it’s okay to do the same.
When leaders normalize blocked calendars, they’re not just managing time, they’re legitimizing boundaries. It tells your team: “Your deep work and your personal life matter here.”
Messaging you can try to use with your team:
“You’ll see more focus blocks on my calendar over the next few weeks. I encourage you to do the same so we can protect time for family and for rest.”
2. Communicate Time Off Clearly
Even when organizations offer generous PTO, many employees don’t fully use it. One recent study found that 46% of employees don’t use all their time off, often because they fear falling behind, burdening coworkers, or hurting their reputation.
At the same time, research consistently shows that vacation and time away from work are linked to:
- Better job performance and productivity
- Higher job satisfaction and creativity
- Lower burnout and emotional exhaustion
The problem isn’t just whether people take time off, it’s whether they feel safe fully disconnecting.
How leaders can set the tone:
- Communicate your time off early. Let your team and stakeholders know when you’ll be offline, who’s covering, and when you’ll respond after you return.
- Encourage others to do the same. Normalize PTO announcements in team meetings and Slack/Teams channels.
- Model true disconnection. Avoid sending non-urgent emails or messages while on vacation, or use send-later features to keep boundaries intact.
Messaging you can try to use with your team:
“I’ll be out from December X–Y and fully offline. [Name] will be your point of contact while I’m away. I’d love for each of you to identify rest time this month too, share it with the team so we can support you in fully unplugging.”
3. Say No Without Guilt
For many leaders, especially in HR “no” can feel like a four-letter word. You’re used to being the fixer, the counselor, the one who says, “I’ll figure it out.”
But constantly saying yes out of guilt or fear of disappointing others is a fast track to burnout. Research in psychology shows that difficulty setting boundaries and a strong need to please are closely tied to stress, emotional exhaustion, and resentment over time.
Saying no is a leadership skill.
How leaders can set the tone:
- Prioritize ruthlessly. When you say yes to one initiative, you’re implicitly saying no to another. Make that trade-off conscious.
- Use “no” as redirection, not rejection. For example: “We don’t have the capacity to do this now, but we can revisit in Q2,” or “This doesn’t fit our priorities, but here’s another resource that might help.”
- Name your limits out loud. When leaders share what they’re not taking on, they give their teams permission to do the same.
4. Define Your Capacity
During high-pressure seasons, it’s easy for leaders to assume they must hold everything: business outcomes, team morale, every employee’s emotional state, every crisis.
But trying to carry it all is unsustainable and often counterproductive.
Defining your capacity means getting honest about:
- What you can own and influence (your behavior, communication, priorities)
- What you can support but not fully control (other leaders’ choices, employee reactions)
- What is outside your control (economic climate, company-wide decisions, external events)
This “circle of control” work is crucial for protecting mental health and making effective decisions.
How leaders can set the tone:
- Share your capacity framework. Be transparent about what your team can realistically deliver during the holiday and year-end period.
- Normalize asking for help. Encourage leaders and ICs to raise flags when their workload exceeds their capacity.
- Align priorities. If new requests come in, revisit the list and adjust together rather than quietly absorbing more.
Why This Matters Year-Round, Not Just in December
Holiday stress just amplifies what’s already there. Boundaries are not a seasonal initiative; they’re a core part of a healthy culture.
For HR and people leaders, that’s a business case as much as a wellbeing case.
When leaders:
- Block their calendars and protect deep work
- Clearly communicate and fully take time off
- Say no without guilt and focus on what matters
- Define and honor their capacity
…they’re not just taking care of themselves, they’re setting a standard that ripples across the entire organization.
How to Put This into Practice with Your Team
If you want to turn these ideas into action, try this:
- Pick one boundary to model this month. For example, “After 6 p.m., I’m offline unless it’s an emergency,” or “No meetings on Friday mornings.”
- Tell your team what you’re doing and why. Connect it to performance and wellbeing.
- Invite your team to choose their own boundary. Encourage them to share it in your next team meeting or 1:1.
- Reinforce and protect it. Support them when they uphold their boundary, especially when it’s inconvenient.
Leaders set the tone. When you model healthy boundaries, your team feels safer to follow, and that might be the most impactful gift you can give them this season and all year long.
