With more employees continuing to work from home, and often struggling to separate their work and home lives, there is growing demand for the ‘right to disconnect’. The Office for National Statistics found people working from home put in, on average, an extra six hours of unpaid overtime a week in 2020, compared to three hours per week for those who did not work from home. While some of this was likely due to the strains of the pandemic, it is a worrying development. Campaign group, Right to Disconnect UK, are raising awareness and pushing the agenda to introduce the right to bring ways of working up to date to reflect current, digital ways of working.
What is the ‘right to disconnect’ law?
The ‘right to disconnect’ is the right to disengage from work and work-related communications, (eg emails, calls, messages etc) during non-work hours.
It means workers can’t be contacted outside their contracted working hours, helping the large numbers now working from home, to switch off. The aim is that every employee is able to enjoy their free time away from work without being disturbed, unless there is an emergency. UK government has not yet revealed plans to introduce such as right, but we anticipate they will follow other countries such as Ireland in due course.
What does this look like in practice?
Earlier this year Ireland put into place the right to work through a new Code of Practice. They key clauses to note are;
- The right of an employee to not have to routinely perform work outside their normal working hours.
- The right not to be penalised for refusing to attend to work matters outside of normal working hours.
- The duty to respect another person’s right to disconnect (for example, by not routinely emailing or calling outside normal working hours).
While many of us wouldn’t dream of contacting our teams outside their working of hours, and the right prevents this behaviour. In fact, employees are encouraged only to respond to contact from work when they are actually back within their working hours. In essence, employees will become entitled to switch off their digital devices and send automated emails during non-working hours.
What are the benefits?
Employers may feel their teams are highly productive and committed where employees are regularly working out of hours, but it can have a detrimental effect;
- Increased errors and work-related injuries as teams are not properly rested, impacting on productivity
- Resentment as family life is impacted, impacting on morale and employee turnover
- Increased mental and physical health issues, impacting on attendance
Each of these have a direct effect on profitability of the organisation. The right to disconnect counteracts these effects and contributes to the growing movement towards staff wellbeing.
In what is already a tight labour market, giving your teams the option to work from home with the addition of the right to disconnect, could be an effective attraction strategy. This is likely to set you above other organisations competing to recruit into similar roles, and give you a larger number of better quality of candidates to select from.
Final thoughts
It is hard to see any employees who would fail to benefit from the right to disconnect. However, while pressure to introduce such a right is growing, the UK government has not yet revealed plans to push this agenda forwards. We encourage employers to introduce their own codes of practice to reap the rewards.
To get professional help putting together your Right to Disconnect Code get in touch today.