is it OK to send work emails late at night?

A reader writes:

As a manager, new parent, and generally busy person, I work some strange hours. For example, yesterday I was online at 2 am (as my daughter woke me up during the night and I decided to use some time to clear my work inbox ahead of a busy Monday) and 10 pm (as I finished early to play with my daughter but needed to meet a deadline). I don’t expect these kinds of hours from my team or want to encourage people to work outside of hours if it doesn’t suit them, but sometimes these are the hours that suit me!

What can and should I do to make it clear that what I do isn’t what I expect from the team and that following my example won’t have any impact on my opinion of them or their performance? Working hours is part of my “welcome to the team” conversation and I do talk to each person about it periodically using phrasing like, “You may see some emails from me at strange times. This is because I don’t have a set working pattern and sometimes work early or late to allow me flexibility. I absolutely don’t expect anyone to reply to me or be checking their emails outside of their normal working hours so please work whatever hours suit you.” I feel like that’s clear but I just keep having “actions speak louder than words” going round my head.

I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

• I’ve been over-sharing at work — how do I reset?
• How to tell a computer-illiterate coworker I can’t keep helping her

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