The Social Price of Working Beyond the Call of Duty

On March 25, 2026, France’s Cour de cassation ruled that an employer had not breached an employee’s right to disconnect when the employee answered emails during sick leave. The court emphasized that no immediate response was required and that the employee had chosen to connect. The case turned on a familiar workplace distinction: was the extra effort genuinely voluntary, or did the employer create an expectation that made it difficult to refuse?

A recent study by Ekaterina Netchaeva, Remus Ilies, Massimo Magni and Jingxian Yao examines that distinction inside everyday working life. The researchers compare employees who perform helpful tasks beyond their formal roles with employees who feel pushed to perform them. Their finding challenges a common assumption: the pressure to go the extra mile produced more fatigue than actually doing so.

What counts as voluntary at work?

Management researchers call these extra efforts organizational citizenship behaviors. They include helping a colleague, taking on an additional responsibility, staying late, supporting a newcomer or contributing to a project outside the formal job description. They are discretionary acts that can help an organization function more effectively, even though they are not directly required or formally rewarded.

Organizations tend to value such behavior. Managers may praise employees who step forward, circulate stories about people who made exceptional efforts or describe what a committed team member is expected to do. The request may remain unspoken. Employees can still understand which behavior wins approval and which refusal could be noticed.

The research separates the visible action from the felt expectation. Organizational citizenship behavior describes what the employee actually does. Citizenship pressure describes the perception that the employee should do it. The two can occur independently: an employee may help without feeling pressured, or may feel pressure throughout the day without taking on the extra task.

That distinction also explains why a formal rule captures only part of workplace experience. The French court looked for evidence that the employer had obliged the employee to answer. Netchaeva and her coauthors study the less visible pressure created by norms, messages and expectations before any explicit order is given.

Why can pressure cost more than action?

The researchers draw on the Model of Human Energy, which treats fatigue as an indication that a person’s resources feel threatened or depleted. Both the extra behavior and the pressure surrounding it could consume energy. The study was designed to compare their effects rather than treat one as a simple precursor to the other.

The researchers recruited married professionals in India from sectors including consulting, insurance and healthcare. Employees and their spouses completed repeated daily assessments covering work behavior, felt pressure, fatigue and evening social activity. Sleep quality from the previous night was measured objectively. This experience-sampling approach allowed the researchers to examine changes within the same person from one day to another.

The main result was clear. Employees reported greater end-of-day fatigue on days when they felt more pressure to engage in citizenship behavior. Actually performing the extra-role behavior did not produce the same increase in fatigue.

The study therefore locates the cost in the demand employees perceive, rather than in the helpful act alone. A manager may see no extra assignment on a schedule and no instruction in an email. The employee can still finish the day depleted by the expectation to prove commitment, cooperate more or remain available for additional work.

The finding also separates helpful behavior from the conditions surrounding it. Employees may choose to help because the action has value, supports a colleague or fits their own goals. The same action carries a different psychological cost when it feels compulsory.

Why does the previous night matter?

This result also connects managerial behavior across two working days. After-hours demands can reduce the sleep that helps employees deal with pressure the following day. In published comments on the study, Netchaeva advised managers to avoid overburdening employees with after-hours work and to “temper their messages” so staff feel less pressure to perform voluntary activities.

Indeed, sleep changed the strength of the relationship between pressure and fatigue. Better sleep weakened the effect of citizenship pressure, while poorer sleep left employees more vulnerable to the same felt demand.

The study treats sleep as a daily resource. Employees begin each morning with different capacities to manage workplace pressure. The previous night can shape how strongly an unspoken expectation is felt by the end of the day.

A right-to-disconnect policy can protect time away from digital tools. The research adds another question for managers: do employees believe they can decline extra work without damaging how their commitment is judged?

How does fatigue follow employees home?

The family outcome in the study was specific. Spouses reported how much the employee engaged in social activities with them during the evening. Higher fatigue was associated with less participation in those activities.

The cost of citizenship pressure therefore continued after the employee left work. It reached the home through fatigue, reducing the energy available for shared time with a spouse.

Spousal recovery support weakened this effect. When spouses provided more support that helped the employee recover from work, fatigue had a smaller impact on evening social activity. The finding shows how resources at home can buffer the daily spillover from the job environment.

What should managers change?

The paper’s practical implications begin with language. General statements about what “good employees” do, repeated praise for exceptional availability and stories about colleagues who always step forward can turn discretionary behavior into an informal standard. Managers may intend to encourage cooperation while employees hear a requirement.

Netchaeva and her coauthors advise managers to reduce that pressure. This means paying attention to felt expectations as well as completed tasks. A team can record reasonable working hours while employees still feel pressure to take on repeated efforts outside their roles.

Sleep is the second point of intervention. Protecting rest helps employees face the next day with more resources and weakens the link between citizenship pressure and fatigue. The researchers therefore connect after-hours workload with the way employees experience expectations on the following day.

The March 2026 French ruling distinguished a voluntary decision to connect from an employer’s obligation to respond. The academic study, meanwhile, shows why managers also need to examine the space between those two categories. Extra-role work can remain formally optional and still feel compulsory. The advice from Netchaeva is direct: managers should “temper their messages” so employees feel less pressure.