As of this week, it’s legal to ignore your boss and put your work phone on ‘do not disturb’ out of office hours. Here’s everything you need to know about Australia’s new right to disconnect law reform.
Key Takeaways
- Most Australian employees will have the right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to work-related contact from August 26, 2024, thanks to the new ‘right to disconnect’ law in the Fair Work Act.
- Employees of small businesses won’t have that right until August 26, 2025.
- There is a catch: it can’t be unreasonable to refuse contact. And it’ll be deemed unreasonable to respond if the contact is, say, required by law.
- Importantly, it doesn’t prohibit employers contacting employees outside of regular working hours, but it does mean employers need to rethink operations – particularly if they have international operations.
Key facts
- 87% of office workers say they’ve been contacted outside of working hours, according to a survey by Robert Half.
- 5.4 hours: That’s how many hours Australian workers averaged in unpaid overtime per week, in 2023.
- 60% of Australians experience exhaustion and anxiety due to their workload.
- 78% of employees are more likely to work for a company with a clear right to disconnect policy, according to recruitment firm, people2people.
- France was the first country to introduce right to disconnect laws in 2017.
Big number
$18,000. That’s the maximum penalty for an employer who violates the Right to Disconnect law.
Key background
Australia’s workplace regulator has given Australians the legal right to disconnect from work outside of regular working hours under the Fair Work Act. This is the first change in Fair Work’s ‘Çlosing Loopholes’ journey, where it plans to criminalise wage underpayments, make changes to labour-hire employee laws and redefine casual work.
The big driver for introducing the law is to protect the health and wellbeing of workers in an increasingly connected world.
“For too long, the boundaries between work and life have been blurred, continuous connection to work has been normalised and the pressure to be available at all hours of the day and night has been building for working people across the country,” Leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt, said in the second reading of the bill.
“With the proliferation of smartphones and advances in technology, work emails are only a notification away and a phone call from your boss can interrupt a night out with friends or family. Workers are often expected to be on call 24/7 to answer emails, take calls and be available to their employers at a moment’s notice. The Senate work and care committee described this phenomenon as ‘availability creep’.”
Related
When will you not have the right to disconnect?
Employees will have the right to refuse contact unless it’s unreasonable to do so. Whether something is ‘unreasonable’ is a little vague. According to Fair Work, it depends on a few factors, like:
- The reason for the contact.
- How the contact is made – and how disruptive it is to the employee.
- Whether the employee is compensated or paid extra to work additional hours, or be available to contact to perform work within a specific period.
- The nature of the employee’s role and level of responsibilities.
- The employee’s personal circumstances, including family or caring responsibilities
- Other matters.
This has led to some concern that the right to disconnect laws will be difficult to implement in practice. And there are examples abroad where it hasn’t worked so well, or may not work: The Labour government in the UK is currently trying to implement a right to disconnect law, but its existing 48-hour-work-week structure has limited its potential impact.
Crucial quote
“Availability creep impacts mental health, exacerbates work-life stress, productivity and takes workers further away from the principle of a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay,” Adam Bandt.
Tangent
The four-day work-week movement is still going strong. An experiment by the University of Cambridge showed significant reductions in stress levels and absenteeism among participating organisations. Many businesses also reported minimal impact on revenue, with some even seeing slight increases—a testament to the efficiency gains from streamlined work processes. You can read more about that here.
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