Only 8% of workers attribute a promotion to after-hours availability, as employees reject the cost of performative availability.
This recalibration comes as promotion rates decline across 10 of the 11 industries tracked by Workday in the first half of 2025.
A June 2026 survey of 1,006 U.S. employees by Software Finder found 69% of respondents said being available after hours has not meaningfully improved their careers. While the “always-on” group reported more upside—57% say their availability helped their career—only 17% credit it with a promotion, compared to 2% of workers who set firmer boundaries.
The sacrifice for this small edge is steep. Those who remain always-on faced 2.8 times the likelihood of worsened burnout, 2.6 times the likelihood of worsened work-life balance, and 2.4 times the likelihood of worse sleep compared to those who set boundaries.
Gen Z workers are pushing back against after-hours expectations. At 65%, Gen Z respondents were the least likely to report feeling pressure to respond after hours, while both Gen X and millennials stood at 72%. This resistance is not a lack of drive but a challenge to workplace norms, described as “performative availability” by Jeff LeBlanc, a lecturer at Bentley University.
Gen Z hasn’t shown that they don’t value hard work,
he writes. Might be compounding these expectations
are managers, often millennials and Gen X, who may hold these views. A 2025 study covered by Fortune found managers rated employees who unplugged after hours as more productive but less committed and less deserving of promotion, even with identical performance reviews.
The strain of an always-on culture is widespread. According to Deloitte’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, which included more than 22,500 respondents across 44 countries, 48% of Gen Zs and 45% of millennials reported feeling burned out.
Emma Codd, Deloitte Global’s global inclusion leader, put the stakes plainly in the report: When showing up becomes more important than being well, inequities deepen, and the cost shows up in burnout, attrition, and lost potential.
Workers’ professional ambitions reflect this burnout: in the Deloitte survey, only 6% of millennials and Gen Zs identified reaching a leadership position as their primary career goal.
Even time off offers little relief, as 73% of workers check work messages on vacation and 51% have answered a work email while away, with 49% of workers worrying that setting boundaries could hurt their careers.
- Source: Fortune
