“Working nights, weekends, and holidays may be required … Overtime is often required (sometimes on very short notice) … Work schedules are subject to change without notice.”

—Amazon job application quoted in The Atlantic

If you think set schedules are a thing of the past or unnatural in today’s economy, try squaring that state of affairs with the demands of child-rearing. Parents know children do best when they have a routine, and one of the best things a parent can provide is predictability in scheduling. Throwing curve balls that disrupt schooling, naps, meals, and other daily activities can wreak havoc on a child’s mood and confidence.

We are not so different as adults, but it is easy to forget that when many of us work without the possibility of a set schedule. Judith Shulevitz explores this problem in her recent Atlantic article, “Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore.” She observes what many of us probably know anecdotally but haven’t confirmed on a broader societal level:

What makes the changing cadences of labor most [alienating] is that they divide us not just at the micro level, within families and friend groups, but at the macro level, as a polity. Staggered and marathon work hours arguably make the nation materially richer—economists debate the point—but they certainly deprive us of what the late Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter described as a “cultural asset of importance”: an “atmosphere of entire community repose.”

Among the statistics cited, roughly 20 percent of Americans work without regular hours, and 80 percent of hourly workers have constantly changing schedules. 40 percent get less than seven days’ notice on schedule changes, and 28 percent get less than three days’ notice. Of more than 1,000 professionals surveyed, 92 percent worked over fifty hours a week, and 28 percent of those worked more than sixty-five hours a week.

How do we reconcile our need as a human community for predictable social interactions with the seeming inevitability of constant change in the workplace? “Work-life balance” becomes a discouragingly unrealistic concept the more our professional lives bleed into nights and weekends, or when healthy boundaries between work and not-work—including family, recreation, and rest—begin to dissolve completely. If you can’t currently get through a family dinner without checking work email, you understand what’s at stake.

Legislation can sometimes help introduce reforms—such as recent predictive scheduling laws in cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle—but employers, too, can be proactive in addressing the problem. As mentioned above, it remains debatable whether staggered and marathon hours even improve the bottom line; it may actually be in a corporation’s best interest to find ways to instill some measure of predictability in workers’ schedules.

In my experience as an HR consultant, I’ve discovered that talent thrives on a sense of expertise over tasks at hand, and employees exhibit greater adaptability to change when they feel a degree of control. While change is inevitable, shifting outlooks should never be an excuse to cause worker burnout and turnover. If a new project, technology, or workflow protocol presents unknown variables and challenges, leaders can provide wider margins of time around those unforeseen circumstances. Lack of predictability only poses a threat if there is no room to accommodate it.

Also, rather than making short-notice schedule changes the norm, managers can identify particular action items in advance that will require more hands on deck and allow for irregular staffing or increased team membership on a case-by-case basis. Finally, I suggest keeping lines of communication clear and open. When change alters patterns of work, team members are more likely to get frustrated if they don’t feel they have equal access to necessary information.

Making these provisions will reduce stress levels among employees, and most importantly, allow them a sense of control that can prevent job anxieties from bleeding into time with family and friends outside of work. It will shore up boundaries that will not only improve recuperation time away from work but also enhance resilience on the job—leading to higher productivity and retention.