Does the UK need a legal ‘right to disconnect’, or can employers be trusted to be reasonable?

Don’t you just love that Friday feeling? Swanning out of the office, skipping along to the tube station, popping into M&S for a treat dinner and maybe a gin in a tin, all thoughts of to-do lists, reports and spreadsheets disappearing into thin air. Your WhatsApp pinging with messages in the group chat, a fun weekend unfolding before you.

But then another notification pops up. It’s your boss on Slack, “Happy Friday everyone! Just a quick reminder: our quarterly results meeting is on Monday. DO NOT forget. Enjoy your weekend!” Wah. Fat chance. Your train has arrived – at anxiety central. The joyful weekend haze clears, replaced by mounting stress. Maybe you should spend a few hours prepping instead?!

Table of Contents

• What is the right to disconnect – and do we need it?
• Current global landscape
• Could the UK be next?
• Isn’t that a bit ‘nanny state’?
• Should we go for it?
• Key takeaways

What is the right to disconnect – and do we need it?

While smartphone and internet technology have given us work-from-anywhere flexibility, making work more accessible and enjoyable for many, they also tether us to a 24/7 ‘always-on’ culture that can creep into our every waking moment. Get the balance wrong and rather than a gateway to greater freedom, ‘the world is your office’ can feel like more of a cage with screens on every wall.

If people are scared to take time off for fear of appearing less committed, or where their time off isn’t really ‘off’ at all because they’re getting constant reminders of or contact from work, they are at risk of burnout. As well as being unhealthy and unpleasant for the person concerned, it has a counterproductive effect – lower productivity, more errors, more sickness absence and higher turnover.

In response to this new reality where your boss, colleagues or clients can contact you anywhere, at any time, do we need to give workers a legal right to disconnect? Or can businesses be trusted to set reasonable expectations without government intervention?

Current global landscape

France has gone for the former, more prescriptive option. In 2017, it pioneered a legal right to disconnect, applicable to all companies with 50 or more employees. Under this law, businesses are required to set specific hours where employees are not expected to respond to work communications – emails, calls, or contact on any other platform.

Since then, several European countries have followed suit with similar regulations, including Spain, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Ireland. Outside of Europe, Australia now has a right to disconnect law to help employees manage the reality of constant connectivity, and parts of Canada have put laws in place around responding to work communications.

Could the UK be next?

So far, there is no legal right to disconnect in the UK, but the new Labour government is keen to change this. The closest thing we have right now is the Working Time Regulations 1998, which set a maximum average number of working hours per week, currently 48 – unless employees voluntarily opt out. The opt-out option, and no mention of out-of-hours contact, means this does nothing to stop presenteeism, which is essentially what logging on outside of work is.

The proposed plan for the UK involves the creation of a Code of Practice that will mean employers must agree with their staff when and how they can be contacted outside of contracted hours. Breaches of the code could then be used as evidence in tribunals.

Isn’t that a bit ‘nanny state’?

It’s important to say that this pressure doesn’t always arise from the employer. It goes both ways. Some people find it hard to switch off and can’t resist the temptation to check emails from the pub or home. And then once they’ve seen them, they’re thinking about it and can’t resist replying. Then the recipient does the same thing, plus they CC their colleague, bringing another party into this cycle of doom.

It’s a bad habit that we are all guilty of from time to time, but should it be illegal? Are we like children, needing parents to police our screen time?! Should there not be an element of personal responsibility?

The same phones that keep us permanently tethered to our inboxes have optional safeguards and restrictions that enable you to enforce your own boundaries. There are things you can do to protect yourself and others from interruptions to personal time:

• Focus mode – if you’re not working, set your device to not show work-related notifications.

• Timed emails – if you know you work different hours to your colleagues and want to reply to an email at 2am because it’s convenient for you, respect their boundaries by sending it on a timer. Then it’s not waking them up at night but arriving in their inbox when they start work.

• Leave work devices at work – unless you’re WFH, do you really need to have your work phone/laptop with you? If there’s no actual need, remove the temptation.

As well as being practical, easily actionable steps, the above measures also mean people can still enjoy the benefits of flexible work without encroaching on others’ boundaries. Some people might like to catch up on emails at night so that they have more time free in the day. A blanket approach to the right to disconnect based around ‘regular’ business hours could take away from the flexibility that has been so welcomed by many.

But of course, these actions only protect you, and they only protect you from yourself. They are blockers and filters, but if there are still people trying to get through then the problem hasn’t gone away. Sadly, there are employers who may treat staff more or less favourably depending on their responsiveness out of hours.

If you know this to be the case in your company, even if you have the tools to block it out, you might feel an implicit pressure to meet these unfair standards and fear or stress if you don’t or can’t.

Ultimately a top–down approach is needed, and before we worry about individual action we need to look higher. The top may not have to be the strong arm of the law, but certainly it needs to come from above and it must take the form of actions not words. That means management can’t be emailing out of hours unless that comes with a very clear caveat. For example:

‘I’m sending this email in a time that works for me; there is no expectation that you are keeping similar hours. Please do not feel pressured to reply outside of your working hours.’

Some of the new laws stipulate how the right to disconnect is exercised. For example, in Belgium, companies must train their workforce on appropriate use of communication devices and the risks of poor work-life balance.

Ireland has produced a code of conduct and best practices for employers. There is no reason that companies in the UK can’t adopt similar policies on a voluntary basis. This would go a long way towards creating a “switch-off” culture and setting the right example.

It will require a bit of paperwork from HR as you’ll need clear policies in place showing how you comply with the code, but hopefully these won’t require you to actually do anything differently. If you’ve already got a healthy work culture that respects boundaries and prioritises wellbeing, you’re just formalising that by putting it into writing.

Should we go for it?

It certainly seems possible to address this issue through best practice rather than law – but this requires the will and support of employers, which can’t be taken for granted.

There is a power imbalance between employer and employee that needs to be taken into account. An individual can have mile-high, iron-clad boundaries that they protect with their life, but if their employer doesn’t like this and penalises them for it, they are at an unfair disadvantage. Codifying the right to disconnect would allow people to protect their personal time without fear of repercussions or discriminatory treatment.

Key takeaways

The right to disconnect, whether a legal one or not, is about recognising and respecting that people have a life outside of work that deserves to be ringfenced. They should not be pressured, directly or indirectly, to compromise their wellbeing to increase productivity by working – because that is what it is, even if you’re just replying to an email – out of hours, or penalised for not doing so. And they must respect others’ right to the same.

It is looking likely that this right will become law in the UK, but there’s no need to wait around to see what that looks like. Some progressive employers may even feel the proposed legislation doesn’t go far enough.

To truly tackle “always on” culture, we’ll likely need a combination of formal law, leadership modelling and tech tools that promote work-life balance and time-limited productivity.

Take an honest look at your culture to see if lines are being blurred or boundaries crossed. How can you enforce healthy, non-intrusive device and communication practices in your workplace? For now, it’s in your hands.