Later in 2024, Australia will introduce legislation (amendment to the Fair Work Act) around employees having the right to disconnect from their employment outside of normal working hours.
This will grant employees the right to refuse to respond, monitor or engage with any work-related communications from their employers or third parties outside of working hours. Should an employee refuse, an employer may not instigate any negative consequences upon the employee.
I’ll leave brighter legal minds to provide detailed commentary on the specifics of the legislation.
However, I see this ‘Right To Disconnect’ (RTD) legislation as a solution to a problem we don’t need.
Let’s review this in principle, in the context of the significant changes to working arrangements and conditions in Australia in recent years.
In the last decade, we have seen a dramatic shift in flexible working arrangements. This started with more flexible part-time, casual and gig economy arrangements which resulted in employers/businesses enjoying fractional employee or contract labour suited to their needs. On the employee/contractor side, workers were able to be more flexible in both their working hours, arrangements and the location where their work was conducted.
Fast forward to 2020 and Covid changed everything.
The ‘Working From Home’ (WFH) revolution was borne out of lockdowns and the need for many employees and contractors to conduct their work at home due to city shutdowns.
While this was intended to be a temporary measure through the pandemic, the WFH arrangements (or a modified version of them) have been baked in to employment arrangements. Many workers are working 5 days a week from home. Major banks have experienced employees refusing to come into the office. Some government departments have more than 70% of their workforce permanently working from home very day.
I predicted productivity would drop significantly as a result of this (and it has!)and have written about this separately here https://darrenkbourke.com/blog/2024/4/7/falling-productivity-reality-hits
WFH is now seen as a right by employees, without a reasonable consideration of the impact on their employer’s business to deliver the same level of products & services to customers. It needs to be ‘Win/Win’ for both parties.
Of course, I understand the many benefits of WFH and flexible working arrangements. But it must be an equitable trade between employees and employers. Employers are entitled to monitor productivity and ensure that they are receiving the same outputs from employees under these new arrangements.
With many employees WFH 3-5 days per week, they are enjoying flexible hours at home with little to no commuting. They may enjoy dressing casually, extended breaks to shop or pick up the kids, less fatigue due to no daily commute and extra time.
These are all compelling reasons for employees to be extremely bullish on retaining the WFH model.
Under WFH arrangements for employers, it has never been harder to lead, manage, communicate and coordinate labour. Employers require much more contact in a remote virtual workplace through email, phone, Zoom/Teams meetings and other regular contact. The loss of contact, communication and sharing of information ‘in situ’ within the workplace has required the over-compensation of virtual digital communication.
Now we see the RTD legislation being introduced at a time when employers need to be in regular communication, potentially around the clock, to coordinate labour.
Where is the trade-off?
Of over 1,000 businesses I’ve been exposed to, I would estimate that maybe 10-20 might have abused their employee relationships through constant and demanding out of hours contact with their staff.
Let’s call it 1-2% of business by my estimate.
If we accept that employers grappling with productivity and product/service delivery need to communicate with their virtual workforce more regularly with staff WFH, why would we further shackle them in restricting communication.
So at a time that employees are wanting to maintain WFH arrangements, we have introduced legislation to stop employers contacting employees outside of hours.
I don’t get it.
As part of the trade-off between employers and employees to maintain WFH arrangements, employees should accept and welcome that there needs to be a different management style and communication model to serve a virtual remote workplace.
Since most employees do the right thing by their employees, why do we need additional legislation to restrict them contacting employees?
Fair Work already has legislation around unfair work practices and unfair dismissal.
Employers and employees need to communicate in new and emerging ways in a WFH environment. Genuine communication outside of hours from time to time is required to remain agile, keep business operations ticking over, customers happy, labour utilized and teams informed.
Punish employers that are abusing their employee relationships, but penalizing the many for the few seems terribly unfair.
Cracking a peanut with a sledgehammer is not the answer.
The introduction of the RTD legislation is a solution to a problem we don’t have?
And for employees that want the best of both worlds in WFH and restricting employer contact, be careful what you wish for.
I’m expecting many employers to review their WFH arrangements and some requesting their employees return to the workplace full-time.
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