Right to Disconnect
How often have you taken work calls in the middle of a meal or while driving or attending to your child, how often do you work well/efficiently beyond your office hours? For most people it happens almost every day! Today, the line between personal and professional life has turned blurry.
#WorkFromHome knows no work-life balance. In many professions work runs almost parallelly with our lives, work calls follow us to our vacations, holidays, sick leaves. It is hard to pinpoint where work ends and life outside work begins. Today whether working from home or remotely, most of us are always on stand-by and while some of us, don’t mind this and a lot of us have got used to it. Most of us can really do without it.
In Europe, lawmakers have passed a resolution; wherein they argued that every individual has the fundamental #RightToDisconnect — meaning, you should have the right to not reply any office calls or emails after working hours, you should not be judged or tag-lined unprofessional for not joining online meetings that are calendered well beyond office hours, your sincerity should not be questioned for deciding to not work over weekends. Of course, there can be exceptions but expecting an employee to work beyond office hours cannot become a norm of daily life. Well! it has become one, especially since a lot of us switched to #WFH, the average work day of an employee working from home in Canada, The USA, The UK and Austria has extended longer by over two hours a day.
Before the first lockdown, an average employee in the UK was spending 9 hours on business VPN or the business networks. By January 2021, the 9 hours increased to 11.
· In the US, workers were spending 11 hours on VPN instead of 8 originally.
· In the Netherlands, 10 hours instead of 9; same with Austria.
· In France, Italy and Spain, workers were spending one extra hour on business VPNs.
A Microsoft survey found that most employees believe that their workload has increased significantly since they started working from home; 62% of team calls and meetings are unscheduled or conducted ad hoc.
What about India? One report says: “Indian employees are working beyond 48 hours a week well beyond the ILO norms”. In situations like these, do we have no option but to put a legal stamp on the Right To Disconnect? Is it the only way to protect employees from being overworked and over-burdened?
In 2017, France set strict Work From Home guidelines. In 2018, a pest control firm called “Rentokil” was fined for violating the rules. Ireland has introduced a Code of Conduct around the Right To Disconnect. Trade unions in the UK are demanding something similar. A majority of EU politicians back a legislation that calls on the European Commissioner to develop a block-wide directive on the Right To Disconnect. It’s a porter site work-life balance and many ask why should employees work for extra hours when they’re paid for 7 or 9 hours of work. Studies have shown that giving employees more leisure time has reduced absenteeism, it has also increased their productivity. There’s another school of thought that says the Right To Disconnect is not practical, we must factor in, the difference in Time Zones and the need to always be on standby when signing-up for an emergency service.
So, what’s the solution? If hybrid is to be the future, we must find sustainable and smart solutions to balance work and life even when working from home! Many companies already have; they’re working towards it. One Automaker reportedly does not allow employees to access their emails on their phone between 6:15 p.m — 7 a.m.
Where does India figure?
Unfortunately, the country takes pride in working extra hours, working over the weekend. This pattern is perceived as being professional, being more committed. The Right to Disconnect bill was introduced in India in 2018. Apparently, it did not pass.
In the last three years though, there has been widespread awareness over mental health, about employee well-being,etc. So, there is a hope that this Bill’s proposal converts into Employment Policies.
Thank you, for patiently reading the above article.
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