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.
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
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.