What is the ‘right to disconnect’? How legislation could help with work-life balance

What if workers had the “right to disconnect?” It’s something that could become law in Ontario, is already enshrined in several European countries, and could gain even more traction as people across Canada continue to work from home.

The legislation proposed in Ontario Monday requires companies with more than 25 employees to develop policies that promote disconnecting from work, making it easier to create and maintain boundaries, eliminating some of the pressure to respond to every text, email, Slack notification, or Zoom invite that pops up on an employee’s smartphone in their off hours. It’s a first-of-its-kind proposition in this country.

France pioneered this legislation in 2016 after a study found 37 per cent of workers were using their work phones or laptops outside of business hours and that 62 per cent of workers wanted to see this regulated.

It's something many struggle with – disconnecting from work. The Ford govt says worker protections are on the way that could see employees stressing less about emails when they're off the clock – dubbing it the 'right to disconnect' legislation. @CityNewsVAN #CityNewsEverywhere pic.twitter.com/Ycd64UoUC0

— Tarnjit Kaur Parmar (@Tarnjitkparmar) October 26, 2021

Policies can include expectations around response time for emails, clearly defining what working hours are, and encouraging employees to turn on out-of-office notifications when they aren’t on the clock.

The idea has been touted as something that could create more equitable workplace opportunities, reduce burnout, and help companies retain workers, according to Fiona McQuarrie, retired professor of business administration at the University of the Fraser Valley.

RELATED: ‘Right to disconnect’ bill to promote work-life balance: Ontario labour minister

“The idea has come up because the ways that we can do work now are more wide-ranging than just coming into an office and sitting down at nine o’clock and then getting up and leaving at five o’clock,” she explains, noting the notion of work-life balance became more widely discussed decades ago with the advent of email and cell phones.

“Before there were all these different ways to contact workers, to have people work outside of working hours or outside of the physical workplace, there was a much stronger disconnect between the workplace and home life. I think the idea behind the ‘right to disconnect’ is to try to bring that back in some form, to re-establish some boundaries between work and home because of the psychological importance of that division.”

Not all workers equally able to be available during off hours 

But while everyone may feel the pressure to be constantly available, McQuarrie notes not all people have the same demands on their time or the same technology available after hours.

“If everybody is operating on the same expectation — that work ends when work hours end — it could be quite effective in making a more equitable workplace,” she explains.

“If that expectation is established of people being available beyond regular work hours or even 24/7, obviously that privileges certain people who don’t have commitments outside of work like families, or elders or children to take care of or other commitments. So it would even the playing field a bit more, for sure.”

Even if the expectation of off-hours availability isn’t explicit, it can easily creep in, McQuarrie says. For example, if someone replies to an email while eating dinner, then someone else sends an answer to that before they go to bed, then another colleague chimes in first thing in the morning. The overall effect is a workplace that is communicating constantly.

“One thing that putting in the right to disconnect would help cut down on, is to stop those cycles of responses and information being exchanged. They kind of build on each other and end up building a culture of availability even if consciously, that was not what was intended.”

RELATED: Finding right balance with remote work can reduce burnout, experts say

Another thing to consider, according to McQuarrie, is that a workplace with employees who never stop working isn’t necessarily more productive. She points to one study done with consultants as an example.

“Workers were more satisfied, they were more productive because they were more focused, and also because they had time to do other things. Being available 24/7 theoretically is great, but if all you’re thinking about is work eventually — that catches up with you. We need to do different things in our lives we need to have different experiences and we need a break,” she explains.

“Putting in the requirement that work would be done within these hours but not outside those hours, turned out also to have really good benefits for the organization. It helped them reduce their turnover and it helped to retain employees longer.”

RELATED: Working mothers feeling the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic stress, fatigue, burnout

The pandemic sent swaths of office workers home, while making work even more taxing for so many working in essential services. McQuarrie says this has and will continue to transform the way we think about work as the economy recovers.

“We’re going through a phase where some very fundamental assumptions about work have been challenged,” she says.

“We found out that there are some jobs that you can’t do from home. We’ve also found out that if you’re working from home, and your computer is sitting on your dining room table and you can see it every minute you’re awake, that’s kind of overwhelming for some people and it’s not healthy for them.”

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The federal government is considering giving federally regulated employees the right to disconnect and had a consultation earlier this year. No legislation has been proposed yet. One of the key reasons the consultation was being done was due to the pandemic.

“Recent surveys have shown that workers have been adapting to this new way of working. However, many workers have reported increased issues with ‘switching off’ at the end of the workday. Expectations about being able to disconnect at the end of the day are more important than ever. This is due to the fact more and more Canadians are making their home their workplace,” a backgrounder on the issue reads.

For McQuarrrie, eq.

“There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed in labour legislation like more paid sick leave,” she says, noting Ontario has not committed to giving workers time off, or raised the minimum wage.

“Something like the right to disconnect in labour legislation, it certainly could be a very positive thing, but if people are still being paid substandard wages and being exploited by their employers — the right to disconnect is kind of window dressing.”