# Mattermost communication best practices ## Develop a practice of self-care ### Disconnecting from work Working remotely in a globally distributed workplace can make it challenging to create boundaries between work and personal time. We strive to foster a culture that promotes a healthy work-life balance for our teams and encourage all staff to disconnect from work every day. Disconnecting from work means not engaging in work activities and turning off work-related communication, including changing status on Mattermost to “offline” or setting notifications to silent/"do not disturb", as appropriate. Staff members have flexibility over their working hours according to their time zones and working arrangements with their teams and manager. We encourage teams to be mindful of their colleagues’ designated working hours and to create communication norms and guidelines to align with each team’s unique needs. While staff members are expected to respond to work-related communication (Mattermost messages, email, phone calls, etc.) within a reasonable time frame during their normal working hours, there is no expectation from them to respond outside of their designated working hours. In some situations, it may be necessary to contact colleagues or continue to work outside of normal working hours to meet operational needs and to ensure business continuity. Examples include, but are not limited to, emergencies, urgent customer needs, high volume periods, scheduled “on-call” periods, etc. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://handbook.mattermost.com/operations/workplace/people/working-at-mattermost/mattermost-communication-best-practices.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.