Supporting energy regulation at work: A manager’s guide.

Summary

Work isn’t just about tasks. It’s a living ecosystem of conversations, expectations and unspoken rules. For many people, colleague relationships shape whether they thrive or simply endure the workday. For neurodivergent employees, this impact can be even more pronounced.

Supporting energy regulation at work can feel daunting, especially for managers who are well intentioned but anxious about getting it wrong. When someone’s energy fluctuates, it is often misread as a motivation issue, disengagement, or poor performance.

In reality, energy regulation is about capacity, not effort.

Many people, including those with ADHD or other neurodivergent traits, experience uneven energy across the day, week, or month. Others may be impacted by stress, workload design, health, or broader life demands. None of this is visible at a glance.

This guide is not about diagnosing, fixing, or managing someone’s personal life. It is about helping managers create the right conditions, ask better questions, and work in partnership to support sustainable performance.

Supporting energy regulation at work: why it is not a performance problem

One of the most important mindset shifts for managers is this: fluctuating energy is not a lack of commitment or capability.

In fact, some of the people who struggle most with energy regulation appear to be high performers. They deliver excellent work, meet deadlines, and say yes to everything. The cost is often hidden.

Over time, this can look like:

• Working long hours to compensate for low-energy periods
• Hyperfocus that masks exhaustion
• Sudden drops in capacity after periods of intense output
• Burnout that feels unexpected because performance looked strong

Supporting energy regulation at work means learning to look beyond outputs alone and to notice how work is sustained.

A shared responsibility, with clear boundaries

This is not about managers taking responsibility for sleep, exercise, hormones, or self-care. That is neither appropriate nor effective.

Instead, energy regulation sits across three layers.

What sits with the individual: self-awareness of energy patterns, communicating what helps or hinders, and experimenting with strategies that support them.

What sits with the manager: creating psychological safety, structuring work thoughtfully, reducing unnecessary energy drains, and opening up supportive conversations.

What sits with the organisation: meeting culture, expectations around availability, workflow design and pace, and how time and attention are valued.

When these layers work together, energy stops being a personal struggle and becomes a shared design question.

Matching tasks to energy: a core principle of supporting energy regulation at work

Different types of work require different kinds of energy. This is true for everyone, but especially important when supporting energy regulation at work.

For example, high-energy or high-focus periods may suit deep thinking, problem-solving, or creative work. Lower-energy periods may be better for admin, routine tasks, or preparation. Social or collaborative energy may peak at different times than analytical energy.

When this alignment is off, people become distracted, inefficient, and frustrated. They may spend prime energy time in meetings that add little value, then struggle to complete focused work later.

A simple but powerful manager question is: “What kinds of work feel easiest or hardest at different times of the day?” This is not about rigid schedules. It is about permission to experiment.

Designing the working day to support energy regulation at work

Energy is shaped by how the day fits together, not just individual tasks.

Managers can support energy regulation at work by paying attention to:

• How the day is started, since rushed starts drain energy quickly
• Whether focus time is protected or constantly interrupted
• How meetings are scheduled and whether they are truly needed
• Whether there is space to close the day down, rather than carrying work mentally into the evening

Poor day design leads to constant context switching, wasted effort, and the feeling of being busy without making progress. This is not an individual failing. It is a system issue.

Body doubling as a legitimate support tool

One practical and often misunderstood strategy for energy regulation is body doubling.

Body doubling means working alongside someone else, either in person or virtually, without necessarily collaborating on the same task. The presence of another person can help regulate attention, energy, and momentum.

Examples include quiet co-working sessions, camera-on focus time, sitting together to start a task and then working independently, or shared working hours rather than check-in meetings.

For many people, especially those with ADHD traits, body doubling reduces the energy cost of task initiation and helps sustain focus. It is not micromanagement. It is a way of sharing regulation, not enforcing control.

Early signs something is not working

Managers often spot problems too late because they are looking for performance drops rather than energy strain.

Early signs to notice include:

• Someone always “on” with no visible recovery time
• Reluctance to take breaks or time off
• Irritability, withdrawal, or increased perfectionism
• Difficulty switching off at the end of the day
• A growing mismatch between effort and impact

Naming these observations gently can open up preventative conversations long before burnout occurs.

The cultural elephant in the room

It is impossible to talk about supporting energy regulation at work without addressing culture.

Many workplaces unintentionally drain energy through pointless or excessive meetings, treating everything as urgent, expecting constant responsiveness, and valuing visibility over value.

Challenging this does not mean lowering standards. It means using people’s time and energy well.

The UK Health and Safety Executive highlights workload, control, and support as key factors in work-related stress. Poor energy design is not just inefficient: it is a wellbeing risk.

A practical toolkit for supporting energy regulation at work

This is not about giving managers a script or checklist. It is about creating the right kinds of conversations.

Useful questions include:

• “Where does your energy tend to go during the day?”
• “What feels harder than it should at the moment?”
• “What would be worth experimenting with for a few weeks?”
• “What drains energy here that we could change together?”

The goal is not answers. The goal is shared understanding.

When more structured support helps

Sometimes, conversations and small experiments are not enough. Patterns keep repeating, or the energy cost of work remains too high.

This is where a Workplace Needs Assessment can be a powerful next step. It provides a structured, evidence-based way to understand what is really going on and what adjustments could make work more sustainable.

Managers do not need to have all the answers. They just need to know when to bring in the right support.

Ready to take the next step?

If you are working to build a more sustainable, inclusive environment for neurodivergent employees, our talks and workshops are designed to help managers and teams have exactly these kinds of conversations with confidence.

For individual employees who would benefit from one-to-one support, our coaching offer works well alongside the practical workplace changes explored in this post.

You are also welcome to get in touch to talk through a specific situation.

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Supporting energy regulation at work is not about perfection. When managers stop misreading energy dips as motivation problems, create permission to experiment, and challenge systems that drain people unnecessarily, something changes. People do not just cope: they thrive.