Exploring the blurring of boundaries between work and the rest of life, this book explains how individuals, teams, and organizations can navigate the hidden costs of digital work to restore structure and balance in their daily lives.

Each chapter follows one of four composite characters: a product manager who cannot locate the end of the workday, a colleague who delivers strong results but can no longer say what any of it was for, a team leader who has become the bottleneck in a team built not to need one, and an HR professional who runs recovery workshops but cannot sleep. Rooted in research, interviews and practice, chapters move from story to evidence to practice, drawing on meta-analytic findings, randomized trials and the operating models of organizations including GitLab, Dropbox, Haier, Decathlon and the LEGO Group. It shows how the erosion of meaning, leadership bottlenecks and failed recovery caused by always-on work are problems of design rather than personal weakness, and demonstrates how to redesign the conditions that produce them.

The book is written for managers and HR professionals leading distributed or hybrid teams and workers who want more control over how their work feels. It will also interest students and researchers in organizational behaviour, human resource management and work psychology, as well as executive education and professional development programmes.

Matej Černe is Professor at the School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His research interests include creativity, human resource management, leadership, and digital work. His research was published in top management journals, including the Academy of Management Journal. He is currently managing a virtual platform for research dissemination #HumanizingDigital Work and a global research project of digital nomads e-Wanderlust.

Amadeja Lamovšek is Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana. Her research interests include work design, human resource management, future of work, and work-life balance. Her work has been published in journals such as Information & Organization, and Applied Research in Quality of Life. She is co-founder of the #HumanizingDigitalWork research dissemination platform.

Jure Andolšek is a researcher and lecturer in management and organization at the School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he is completing a doctorate on sleep and work performance. His research covers leadership, job design, and employee well-being.

Maša Košak is a researcher and PhD candidate at the School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana. Her research focuses on recovery, sleep, stress, and well-being at work, particularly in healthcare and increasingly fluid work environments. She studies how organizations and individuals can create healthier, more sustainable ways of working.