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In the professional services sector, I have personally witnessed abuse by people in positions of power hounding employees for work that is either not urgent, a result of their own time mismanagement or over-promising on delivery deadlines to clients.<\/p>\n \n <\/cite>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \n\n

This practice needs to stop. It places undue stress on employees, creates a toxic work culture and stifles collaborative team environments. The companies that stand by and let this happen will reap a withering employee value proposition and people will simply leave.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n

Employees have choices. I choose to work in crisis management. I love what I do but with that comes the acceptance that I am available when a crisis is in full swing. It’s required for the task.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n

As unpopular as this comment may be, I can’t have employees working with me on a crisis who are not prepared to do the same. If they choose to work in crisis management that is what is expected. It’s a choice that comes with demands which fall outside of what the Senate Committee has Recommended.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n\n\n

However, if things do go sour, one of the unintended consequences could be that the employee cynically claims they were not given the right to disconnect outside of work and that they worked more than the 38-hour work week.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n

Getting the balance right with the right to disconnect<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
There will always be employees and employers who abuse the system. As a result, there are some industries that absolutely need clearer boundaries. For example, health and community services workers, frontline workers, shift workers, etc. all need this type of legislation. However, there are other businesses where it could cause more harm than good.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n
A little common sense will go a long way to assisting. For example, technology has made it extremely easy to reach out to employees after hours; teams, text, Slack, email, WhatsApp, and so the list goes on. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n
To deal with the right to disconnect, we have set up on our email system an automatic prompt which, after 5:30pm says: “Do you want to send this email outside of work hours?”—simple but effective.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n
A while back I used to send an email after hours and I’d write, in bold in the subject line: Please don’t read or act on this until tomorrow or Monday. I reckoned that was thoughtful of me.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n
How wrong I was. An employee pointed out to me in one of our Stop, Start, Continue meetings that irrespective of my ‘thoughtful’ subject line, the email still caused stress because it would hang over their heads the whole evening or weekend.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n
I have, in the main, stopped doing this.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n\n
Businesses that have an entrenched culture of forcing staff to work excessive, unreasonable, long and sometimes unsafe hours deserve this legislation. But there are others who will suffer and then there are always those employees who will abuse the system.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n\n \n
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The best we can do as employers right now is to talk about how we can set up the changes that are coming with the Right to Disconnect legislation.<\/p>\n \n <\/cite>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
We all have a right to family time, private time and work time, so getting the balance right will be the key.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The right to disconnect from work during personal time, during the week and on weekends should be protected by law. But there are some challenges. Find out more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[837],"capabilities":[],"class_list":["post-15899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thought-leadership"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t

Does one size fit all with the right to disconnect?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Does one size fit all with the right to disconnect?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
My wife is a teacher and I work<\/a> in reputation management. A lot of my time is spent dealing with client issues and managing crises.
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