Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

I&#x27;ve dabbled in management a few times in my career. This meant attending manager-only meetings and trainings. I&#x27;ll never forget one time when a manager in a focus group said something along the lines of, &quot;The tech sector is going through a rough patch, so we can turn the screws on our employees and they&#x27;ll have to take it because they will have a hard time trying to find a job somewhere else.&quot; This is at a company where most of the employees are on work visas, so losing their job can very rapidly escalate into having to leave the country in short order.<p>After I picked my jaw up off the floor I realized I simply lacked the scruples I&#x27;d need to be &quot;one of them.&quot; I also started looking into every legal protection I had available to me in my jurisdiction.<p>I know not every manager is like that. I&#x27;d like to think I wasn&#x27;t. But there are enough of them that think that way that legal protections often need to be there.

I like the Swiss implementation of this. A manager _can_ contact an employee on a Sunday, but then the employee is immediately on weekend-rate overtime even if they just got an email with &quot;deal with this next week&quot;. So, many companies have systems that hold back e-mail sent outside of working hours until the next working day unless specially authorised and costed.<p>Never underestimate an economics-based solution to a legal problem, a.k.a. &quot;if you really want to ban it, tax it&quot;.

&gt; But the Australian Industry Group, an employer group, says ambiguity about how the rule applies will create confusion for bosses and workers. Jobs will become less flexible and in doing so slow the economy, it added.<p>Whenever I encounter someone professionally who can&#x27;t deal with a little ambiguity about when it&#x27;s appropriate to interrupt someone; I feel like I&#x27;m working with a child trapped in an adult&#x27;s body.<p>&quot;Children,&quot; who don&#x27;t have the maturity to understand this ambiguity, shouldn&#x27;t be managers.<p>I also find that rules like this come into play because some people (cough, children stuck in adult bodies, cough) just refuse to self-regulate. It takes maturity to think through if an out-of-hours contact is appropriate; these kinds of rules only come about because of widespread immaturity in management roles.

Maybe we should think of these things as employment flags?<p>There&#x27;s no right-to-disconnect in my country, but sometime this year my boss started putting &quot;I don’t expect a response to this email outside of your normal working hours.&quot; on the end of his email signature.<p>I might not be earning FAANG money, but it&#x27;s just another sign I&#x27;m working for a &#x27;good&#x27; company.

With getting no overtime, no time off in lieu, and managers perpetually confusing a &#x27;problem&#x27; with an &#x27;emergency&#x27;, I&#x27;m glad to see this happen. If it will actually make a difference though, I&#x27;m yet to be convinced.

My personal experience is that Australia doesn&#x27;t have a huge problem with this generally. But mileage may vary. If it were a huge problem then vested interests would lobby fiercely against the law, and it seemed to pass without much challenge or comment from the public here.<p>This law might seem like a big deal if you&#x27;re working in a place without labour protection laws, and therefore you&#x27;re used to constant abuse from management and live in permanent anxiety of some petty retaliation. But here it really ought to just be a formalisation of normality unless you&#x27;re working with particularly poor managers.

This is already the case in Germany. It also applies to vacation and sick days. Above all, it&#x27;s deeply ingrained in German culture, so that no one expects to reach you outside of your working hours.<p>I help people settle in Germany, and it&#x27;s one of the main cultural aspects I cover. The other is how normal it is to take sick days.

You have the right to, and can’t be punished for it. But you can still be punished if they just say it&#x27;s unrelated to it, whether through missed opportunities, increased workload, undesirable assignments, or even termination with flimsy justifications.<p>It’s the age-old: “No one is pointing a gun at their head. They’re doing it because they want to.” -Manager XYZ<p>I can see two ways to prevent it:<p>1. Ban employers from doing so with potential fees, except in cases where it&#x27;s a stipulation on the contract. Although this would eventually lead to employers adding it to every contract. Not a fan of this approach.<p>2. You make them pay you weekend-rate overtime, this would still allow your superiors to contact you, but they would think twice. I would definitely support this, although it might not apply to all circumstances.<p>3. I honestly don&#x27;t know, there&#x27;s probably better solutions from smarter people.

I don&#x27;t live or work in any of those places, but I&#x27;ve been ignoring work emails and calls after hours for a long time. Helps that 1) I don&#x27;t have a work phone, 2) apps that my company uses on my personal phone, and 3) never log into the company network or services on my own laptop.<p>In the few instances when I was called out about it, I asked <i>Could the message&#x2F;call have waited until the following morning&#x2F;Monday?</i> The answer was almost always <i>Yes</i>.

&gt; To cater for emergencies and jobs with irregular hours, the rule still allows employers to contact their workers, who can only refuse to respond where it is reasonable to do so.<p>This clause pretty much invalidates the rest of the rule. Why should an employee need to justify their inability (or unwillingness) to respond? I can understand the &quot;jobs with irregular hours&quot;, but otherwise shouldn&#x27;t it be a best effort thing, without any obligation?

For emails, I generally feel these are a 24hr thing. I turn off email alerts so I can focus on my tasks then check a few times a day only.<p>I used to filter CC emails into their own folder for reading maybe once a day which worked mostly well but occasionally people can&#x27;t seem to use to&#x2F;CC as they are supposed to.<p>Calls I always try to pickup or callback asap but my job calls usually means urgent.<p>Chat like Teams I&#x27;m mixed. Often it&#x27;s urgent but too many people use Teams in my current company like email and it&#x27;s really disruptive to work flow getting 50 unimportant messages a day + long &quot;just one more thing&#x27; task requests. Ive considered putting an auto-reply of &quot;if it&#x27;s not on JIRA it&#x27;s not a task&quot; but that would not come across well.<p>But generally I feel a better law change would be right to work your contracted hours. Put the onus on the company that they have to get your workload to the contracted hours or pay overtime. Some exceptions for execs on top end pay, but generally this would be a better win for employees, and then you can get that after work call but your being paid extra, which in itself will make people think twice about calling etc when they know there is a cost.

Lots of people missing nuance or seeing this rule change say what they want it to say, rather than what it actually says.<p>Employers are still allowed to contact employees anytime.<p>Previously you could theoretically be terminated for not reading or replying to messages from your employer outside hours. Now there are restrictions on that. That’s all that’s changed.

Yes, but &#x27;Employers should be able to justify contacting professionals after hours based on common contract clauses that say a worker’s high salary includes reasonable overtime&#x27;.<p>See: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.afr.com&#x2F;work-and-careers&#x2F;workplace&#x2F;the-right-to-disconnect-starts-on-monday-here-s-what-you-need-to-know-20240809-p5k10e" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.afr.com&#x2F;work-and-careers&#x2F;workplace&#x2F;the-right-to-...</a>

So, before this &quot;right&quot; they were physically attached to their devices unable to freely decide to ignore emails? Or there was some kind of timer and expect SLA for answers that needed to be met?<p>Or maybe because not replying under a given SLA led you to be fired? In which case my question is: is your only option to work for companies that have this culture? And you have to force all companies to behave in the same way?

UK is up next:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.euronews.com&#x2F;next&#x2F;2024&#x2F;08&#x2F;20&#x2F;the-right-to-disconnect-what-is-it-and-what-is-europe-doing-to-protect-workers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.euronews.com&#x2F;next&#x2F;2024&#x2F;08&#x2F;20&#x2F;the-right-to-discon...</a><p>By jurisdiction:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Right_to_disconnect" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Right_to_disconnect</a>

Are people here treating emails like IM&#x27;s?<p>An email is inherently asynchronous. Why would I expect a response to an email before working hours? When did people start confusing them with synchronous communication?

I&#x27;m an Australian and I&#x27;m really surprised this law is needed. I would be very surprised to hear somebody was fired for ignoring email after hours.

I thought that&#x27;s normal? I switch off my work phone and laptop and then I do not even know if I get any mails ... is this only a thing in Germany?

I feel bad for people in this situation, but at the same time I think it&#x27;s kind of strange to allow yourself to be in this situation. Personally, I maintain a very strict separation between work devices and personal. Work email, slack, and whatever else I need for work lives on my work devices only. Personal email, whatsapp, etc live on my personal devices only. Most of the companies I&#x27;ve worked at add a remote wipe functionality to the phone, and even though I understand the business case for this and I&#x27;ve never heard of it being misused, that&#x27;s not something I want on <i>my</i> <i>personal</i> devices.<p>I usually only have a couple of exceptions to this policy - I usually have my personal gmail logged in at work, and occasionally for very specific reasons, I might temporarily install &quot;work&quot; apps on my personal phone, for instance when I want to leave work early to catch a train, but need to be in a work meeting later in the day, or to stay in contact with colleagues when out at a conference, etc. These apps get removed again when I no longer need them.<p>When I leave work, the work devices get switched off. In most cases, I leave the work devices at work, including laptops and phones, assuming I have somewhere secure to leave them at work. Almost every company I&#x27;ve worked at, I&#x27;ve had a lockable chest of drawers, so I just put things in there. In the ones without, the laptop stays on the desk plugged in, and I might take the phone home even though it&#x27;s switched off.<p>I&#x27;ve almost never been asked why I haven&#x27;t seen or replied to an out-of-hours communication. On those few occasions, I&#x27;ve just said &quot;All my work devices were switched off for the weekend&quot; and there&#x27;s been nothing further said. In the very few cases where I was expected to be on call, it was previously agreed and so I took the necessary devices home.<p>Obviously, things changed a lot with the shift to remote working during and after COVID, but I still maintained the same boundaries. Even now I have my own company, I have separate computer, desks and even chairs for work and personal use. Slack and work related e-mail is only on the work devices. If I want to do some work over the weekend (which feels acceptable now it&#x27;s for my benefit), I physically sit in a different half of the office to do that.

This new-ish problem speaks to a major reason I personally prefer hybrid&#x2F;on-site work cultures - there is usually a clear barrier between work&#x2F;free-time, at least IME. When I&#x27;m not in the office there is very little expectation that I am working. I personally prefer this separation - when I worked a fully remote job it felt like I was being pinged at any given hour and expected to respond.<p>This law would never happen in the united states. 0%.

This is fine for big companies and government but startups is going to die because of this.

Keep in mind all the low-income employees who are harassed after work for trivial reasons that can absolutely wait by power-trip managers who will now feel a tiny bit more empowered to say no than they did yesterday. I think it&#x27;s a great thing even though it doesn&#x27;t benefit me directly.

~300 hours unpaid overtime per year and having to respond after work to emails and calls? That’s crazy.<p>And they worry now that the economy will slow down. I think people will start to work normally now, in the previous conditions I would work much slower as a compensation.

In my country it is not unusual for people to work 36 hours. You&#x27;d imagine that a nation like Korea or Japan would be twice as rich because they work 70 hours yet it doesn&#x27;t seem to go that way...<p>Obviously if you do have a 50-70 workweek your job IS your life. Your co workers are your best friends and it doesn&#x27;t matter if they call you up in the middle of the night. I have observed that in Workaholic cultures people spend a lot of time socialising with co-workers and less time on actually working.<p>I prefer the Dutch style of &quot;working to live&quot;. Even if that means that you have to bring your own food and eat it behind a laptop. You can socialise at home.

At individual contributor level, such schemes may work -- anyways, people are paid by the hour so anything outside hours is already dubbed &#x27;overtime&#x27;, and companies are bound to care.<p>At management level (i.e. top management talking either between them or with the management levels just below), where hours don&#x27;t get counted (in some countries such as France, it&#x27;s just &#x27;days&#x27;), it really boils down to the top management&#x27;s culture. Workaholic top management = every manager is expected to be workaholic... and Darwin does the rest: soon enough, only workaholics remain.

Generally I&#x27;ll only answer for actual production emergencies and I&#x27;ll expect that I&#x27;ll get time in lieu or overtime payments. I&#x27;ll probably still keep doing that.

I wonder what this will mean for the various forms of on-call. I&#x27;ve seen several policies, I&#x27;m sure there are more:<p>- &quot;Ad-hoc&quot; on-call with no process and you just get a phone call after hours from the boss<p>- &quot;Voluntary&quot; on-call with a stipend, rotation based among a particular team<p>- &quot;Mandated&quot; on-call with full over-time pay &#x2F; penalty rates<p>Are all of these now up for review? Presumably anything written in a contract takes precedence I suppose.

How on earth would one even begin to enforce reverting the dismissal of an employee &quot;because they didn&#x27;t answer their phone after hours&quot;?<p>&quot;Employee was dismissed due to poor performance.&quot; &quot;Employee was dismissed because they were not delivering enough value compared to their peers...&quot;<p>These ideas and protections are great in theory, but very hard to manage in practice, and I&#x27;d imagine it gets tested on the first serious appeal.

As an unambitious fellow happy to grind away at the bottom of the ladder, this is how I&#x27;ve conducted myself most of my career. My brief forays into management have generally impacted my work-life balance too far the wrong way, and correcting said balance ran into incompatibilities with expectations (not in performance mind you, just in the ambiguous and subjective &#x27;that which is required of leadership&#x27;).<p>Y&#x27;all can have it.

As an Aussie I’m glad this is has been codified in law but I’ve personally not had any issues with people expecting me to reply outside of work hours.<p>Then again I’ve always acted like I had this right anyway, if I were contacted outside of working hours I would just ignore it within reason. I always thought there hadn’t been much consequences but perhaps the consequence were respected boundaries…

dammit, i thought aussies were more freedom loving than even usians. i have met and interacted with some of them, and have read a good amount about them, too.<p>did aussies not have this right, earlier?<p>I don&#x27;t know if it should even be called a right, because it seems obvious.<p>to me, it sound more like an attack by employers on employees, to say they cannot do such a thing - before this so-called &quot;right&quot; was ”given&quot;.<p>thoughts?

Almost every message I send after hours saves me double the time during the workday. Otherwise, I would just save it for the workday.

Like in the UK where this already exists. In most contracts you get to sign a waiver. Show me the law and I’ll show you the loophole

Between this and the New Zealand government&#x27;s ruling on Uber, seems like ANZAC countries still maintain worker&#x27;s rights.

When I first started working, I would respond outside of working hours, work overtime, and try to please everyone. As I got older, I developed a rule: as soon as I finish work, I just ignore all work chats, calls, and emails. Did it affect my well-being? Yes, I highly recommend it to everyone!

I can&#x27;t believe they didn&#x27;t have this right previously. I have almost always (except when I was paid specifically for being available anytime) had a habit of turning my phone off&#x2F;airplane as soon as the business hours end.

If an employee doesn&#x27;t respond outside working hours can&#x27;t he be penalised in a different way or miss out in promotions if other employees do? Clearly this law is a good thing but i find it hard to see how it can be enforced.

Another &#x27;good in theory&#x27; idea. Trying to run a business in Australia is &#x27;death by a thousand paper cuts&#x27;. Far too many rules. Letting individuals interact freely creates good outcomes 90+% of the time. Most of these rules are cost-benefit negative because the administrative burden of adherence exceeds the benefit of the new rule. Politicians and govt departments like them though; they get to put a dot-point on their list of achievements.<p>Unfortunately Australia has become a business-backwater (the upper bound of our capabilities is to dig stuff out of the ground and ship it overseas).<p>Sorry if this sounds negative, but every rule - however well-intentioned - steals attention and creativity away from entrepreneurs, slows the economy, drives up prices, reduces customer service, and benefits large incumbents who can withstand the burden.

I already do this in the US.

I am suprised they didn&#x27;t have that right to begin with.

Interesting to see the US perspective on this.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;jv4nz" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;jv4nz</a>

do they have the right to employment??

I think a much favorable law should be that employers must automatically log after hours overtime and pay for such overtime for ALL employees besides the C-Suite.<p>Aka, any communication sent to employees MUST be billed to the company. The company can figure out if they want to pay ALL employees overtime pay or shut down their communication systems after 5 pm.

Interpreting that headline literally ...<p>If person A is working late (maybe they started their day late, or they work from a different timezone) and send a memo during off hours of Person B ... the memo can be &quot;ignored&quot; by Person B even when they come back to work next day?<p>Same for all off hours when person B is on leave - planned or otherwise?

I need this my boss is a total bitch!

I mean... this is a nice thought and all, but all this means is that Australian employees now have the right to be the part of the &quot;difficult decision to reduce our workforce in order to better align with our long term strategic objectives&quot;.

Eric Schmidt : hold my beer

In 2024 it hurts really bad to read all such great news from other nations while sitting in India where industry leaders, startup founders, and politicians are actively trying to impose things like 70 hour work week or so and take away whatever labour protections (which is very little and mostly ineffective and practically none if you are in &quot;corporate&quot;) we have and even encroach upon the Sundays and Saturdays (the latter being working for most of the Indian workers anyway).