Work-life balance | Respecting personal boundaries beyond work hours

In today's hyper-connected world with the constant torrent of emails, Teams messages and other notifications, it may seem to some like they are always “at work”, even when they're not actually at work.

Under plans drawn up and announced recently by Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, in the future your boss could be blocked from messaging you outside of work. Obviously for this to be implemented Labour must win a majority in the next general election and then this could be part of their “New Deal for Working People”.

“Right to Switch off” or “Right to Disconnect”

This is nothing new and has already come into legislation in several European countries and many others are reportedly now considering such legislation, especially since the recent upsurge of working from home.

There have been a number of methodologies used across Europe including:

France was the first European country to introduce legislation in January 2017 when it legally required employers to negotiate agreements with unions.