The U.K. is considering joining a host of other European countries in making it more costly for restless employers to contact their employees after the working day ends.
The country’s fresh-faced Labour government is drafting legislation that would outlaw late-night WhatsApps, emails, and Slacks and potentially fine dissenting bosses heftily.
While commonplace across Europe, legislation giving workers a “right to disconnect” has lagged behind in the U.K., but now might become more European if reported changes to work culture are implemented.
UK following EU guidelines? giggle
i don’t know how much someone would have to pay me to tolerate dealing with work after work, but it’s more than anyone would ever pay me
I don’t work “traditional” hours. So it doesn’t bother when I’m called after hours. I work as needed. This week I’ll work maybe 5 hours. It’s actually busy this week. So if I’m called at 8pm. Who cares ? I have all day to run my errands.
Back when I worked in a traditional role. It drove me nuts the needless things I’d be contacted about after hours
Glad to hear that you found a position where your work experience is enjoyable and compatible with your desired life style. Given your last sentence, I hope you can see how the legislation mentioned here could potentially help people who have not yet been so lucky to achieve that.
I’ve no doubt a previous employer of mine would get us to sign a bit of paper saying we’re happy to be contacted outside of our working hours, and being told it’s mandatory to sign it.
IMO it is perfectly fine to sign that right away, but that is then called on-call duty and requires extra compensation. And THAT is what most employers try to avoid.
I guess nobody has a problem with being messaged to after hours, just with the expectation to reply after hours. Remain and chat are asynchronous communication media, in Stark contrast to phone or video call.
I do. Your own time is your own time. I don’t want to be going to work the next day to be asked first thing what I’m doing about all the emails I was sent last night. Thinking about or reading about work is still work.
I’m not against being sent an email per say, but if I’m expected to read it and they’re making my phone light up with notifications whilst I’m outside of my paid hours, it’s a problem.
My company (24/7 production plant) has a culture of having Do Not Disturb on after hours and email/Teams really being us for “you’ll see this tomorrow”. It’s great! Takes some unlearning on new people coming in, with that and fully unplugging for PTO
Nope. Dont send me messages about work to my phone. I have email and a ticketing system for that. I’ll see to it when I’m at work.
Yeah, why would my boss even have my phone number? There are corpo comm systems for corpo business.
In some companies I’ve worked at, it was even illegal to text each other outside said corpo systems. It made a lot of things clean and easy.
In my workplace we mostly communicate through mail and Teams, and I block notifications out of work hours.
It works wonders in terms of not thinking about work outside of work.
I know that not everyone are as fortunate as me to be able to do such a thing, which is why legislation is most welcome.
I manage a workforce across time zones and, as someone with ADHD, it’s usually best for me to fire off messages as things arise. If I read the summary, I’m not allowed to Slack/email after hours, which creates a huge burden for a remote workforce. I think that summary is incorrect and it’s more that I can’t force people to respond or even read those messages outside their work hours. I completely support this and I regularly bother my team when they respond to stuff after their day has ended. I call this out every quarter as we update our team working agreement. I don’t have any notifications set up for work comms period and have made it very clear the only way to get in touch with me is a phone call.
Yeah! At scale that really falls apart. I have lots of conversations with lots of people across timezones so waiting for the intersection of everyone actively blocks work.
Asynchronous communication is exactly that. If you are not listening when your manager says “don’t Slack after work” that’s on you. I sure fucking don’t and I make that very clear.
