Does your boss contact you after hours asking you to complete tasks? Or are you the boss always texting your employees to get additional work done?
New laws have come into effect across Australia now to protect the rights of workers to disconnect from work and switch off in their own time. These new laws are somewhat controversial, and probably in part because they are not well understood, so it’s worth spending a little bit of time unpacking them to see what the implications might be.
Digital technological advances over the past 20 years have gradually made us more connected, but those digital devices – email, smartphones, laptops and now smart watches are encroaching on our personal time and space. With the power of our office in our hands it is becoming progressively harder to avoid work.
The net result is that people are working well beyond their contracted hours, with employees are not getting paid, and employers reaping the benefit of unpaid labour. A 2023 study estimated that Australian workers were doing an extra 5.4 hours of unpaid work per week on average - higher for males (6.2 hours) compared with females (4.6 hours), but also higher for younger workers too - those aged 18-29 were doing 7.4 hours of unpaid work, compared with only 4.3 for those workers aged 50-59.
This unofficial encroachment into the personal time of employees is known as availability creep or time theft. Technology has created a culture where we are expected to always be on – constantly available and contactable in case the boss needs something done. And it is not only the financial impact, with staff missing out on being paid for their work. There is also a significant welfare and wellbeing concern, with an impact on work-life balance.
In this episode of the Dental As Anything podcast we look at the history of ‘right to disconnect’ laws, the influence of the industrial revolution and the importance for both employees and employers in ensuring that they understand the new changes.
You can listen to the podcast here, and it is also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts - don’t forget to follow/subscribe, and share with your friends.
In case you missed it, you can catch up with the previous episodes of the Dental As Anything podcast here and read news articles here.
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