Just over a week ago, Aus­tralia be­came the lat­est coun­try to im­ple­ment rules al­low­ing em­ploy­ees to refuse to mon­i­tor, read, or re­spond to con­tact from the em­ploy­er or oth­er job-re­lat­ed ap­proach­es out­side their work­ing hours.

This le­gal pro­tec­tion, nor­mal­ly re­ferred to as the right to dis­con­nect, is not new, as oth­er coun­tries are slow­ly im­ple­ment­ing sim­i­lar poli­cies, es­pe­cial­ly in Eu­rope (France passed a most­ly ig­nored leg­is­la­tion lim­it­ing out-of-hours work email ac­tiv­i­ties as far back as 2017).

The le­gal pro­tec­tion in Aus­tralia comes with caveats, as, in some cir­cum­stances, the right to dis­con­nect does not ap­ply. These ex­cep­tions in­clude cas­es where the con­tact or at­tempt­ed con­tact is re­quired by law or de­pend­ing on sit­u­a­tions such as:

• The rea­son for the con­tact;

• The type of con­tact and the lev­el of dis­rup­tion it may cause;

• Any com­pen­sa­tion (fi­nan­cial or non-fi­nan­cial) the em­ploy­ee re­ceives out­side nor­mal work­ing hours or to be avail­able to work when the con­tact is made;

• The em­ploy­ee’s role and their lev­el of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty; and

• The em­ploy­ee’s per­son­al cir­cum­stances (for in­stance, fam­i­ly or car­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties).

So, in essence, the re­stric­tions be­ing im­ple­ment­ed are not blan­ket ones but are aimed at re­duc­ing an ex­pec­ta­tion, even more so in the age of ‘al­ways on’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools such as text mes­sages, emails, and What­sApp, that em­ploy­ees are to re­act to work de­mands any time of the day and any day of the week.

The rules are less clear about and may not ap­ply to work de­mands out­side paid hours that are not for­mal­ly con­tacts, like emails that need be­ing dealt with or doc­u­ments that must be com­plet­ed to a dead­line.

Nat­u­ral­ly, em­ploy­ers will re­coil at the thought of more reg­u­la­tions and lim­i­ta­tions, es­pe­cial­ly as even ac­ci­den­tal breach­es of the rules such as those im­ple­ment­ed in Aus­tralia may cost them dear­ly in the shape of fines or com­pen­sa­tion to the em­ploy­ees. But the prin­ci­ples that lie be­hind these reg­u­la­tions ought to be se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­ered by good em­ploy­ers, ir­re­spec­tive of whether they are le­gal oblig­a­tions or not.

That’s be­cause there is plen­ty of ev­i­dence around the world show­ing that those who have time to un­wind and ‘switch off’ from work can ac­tu­al­ly be­come more pro­duc­tive, as rest­ing or hav­ing time to think is cru­cial to some­one’s well-be­ing and ef­fi­cien­cy.

And, whilst the pan­dem­ic showed us that more flex­i­ble work­ing prac­tices are vi­able, in­clud­ing work­ing from home, it al­so ex­posed the dan­gers of work and pri­vate lives be­com­ing blurred, to the point that some end­ed up not work­ing from home but, ef­fec­tive­ly, liv­ing at work.

In fact, some com­pa­nies around the world have al­ready im­ple­ment­ed vol­un­tary in­ter­nal poli­cies seek­ing to re­strict the overuse of emails out­side of­fice hours to re­duce the ex­pec­ta­tion, es­pe­cial­ly amongst more ju­nior staff, that they ought to be ‘al­ways on’. This is per­haps one of the most im­por­tant points to con­sid­er when look­ing at how a busi­ness can strike the right bal­ance be­tween deal­ing with the de­mands of the mod­ern world and en­sur­ing the staff can un­wind.

It is nor­mal­ly the more se­nior staff mem­bers that set the tone and the cul­ture of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, in­clud­ing if or how they work out­side nor­mal of­fice hours. It won’t sur­prise any­one that they al­so tend to be more con­nect­ed all the time, giv­en the ad­di­tion­al de­mands of their jobs.

How­ev­er, if not care­ful, they may ac­ci­den­tal­ly set the tone for the rest of the busi­ness. Take emails, for in­stance. It may sur­prise many, but peo­ple tend to pay at­ten­tion to the time stamp that shows when the email was sent.

So, if a se­nior man­ag­er is reg­u­lar­ly fir­ing off emails from 5 am or late in­to the night, he or she may be un­wit­ting­ly set­ting the ex­pec­ta­tion that the di­rect re­ports must do the same. Or clear­ly set­ting the ex­pec­ta­tion of long hours for every­one if the same man­ag­er is de­mand­ing a re­ply with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. This is not pro­duc­tive or wise. Like­wise, as tried by some or­gan­i­sa­tions, blan­ket bans on the use of work emails out­side of­fice hours may not be the an­swer.

As far back as in 2019, re­searchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex in the UK con­clud­ed that, al­though these bans could help some staff switch off, they al­so could cause stress by stop­ping peo­ple from achiev­ing their goals, lead­ing to high­er, not low­er, lev­els of anx­i­ety.

The find­ings from the study prove, es­sen­tial­ly, that com­mon sense must ap­ply and that com­pa­ny poli­cies must be in line with the dif­fer­ent ways staff ap­proach work. In oth­er words, let peo­ple deal with emails in a way that best suits their per­son­al­i­ties, but don’t make work-re­lat­ed emails a must for all on days off or out­side of­fice hours.

This ap­proach will al­ways help busi­ness­es have a more di­verse and rep­re­sen­ta­tive work­force by be­ing sen­si­tive to in­di­vid­ual needs, es­pe­cial­ly for those who care for young chil­dren, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, or the el­der­ly, thus lim­it­ing their time and ac­cess to work emails when they are at home.

The ‘al­ways on’ na­ture of our lives in to­day’s world is very un­like­ly to go away, but em­ploy­ers cer­tain­ly can and must find ways to avoid burnout by cre­at­ing the same ex­pec­ta­tions as far as work is con­cerned, ir­re­spec­tive of any le­gal re­quire­ment to do so. That will cer­tain­ly be good for their em­ploy­ees as well as for the busi­ness.