The Right to Disconnect Should Be Law, Not a Perk

It is 9pm on a Tuesday. You are at home, trying to relax, and your phone buzzes with a work email. It is not urgent. It could wait until tomorrow. But it is from your manager, and you know from experience that not responding quickly will be noticed. So you respond. And then another email comes. And another. By the time you put the phone down, it is 10pm, you are stressed, and your evening is gone. This is not an occasional inconvenience. For millions of UK workers, it is the norm. And it is burning people out.

France, Ireland, and Portugal have legally enshrined the right to disconnect—the right to ignore work emails and calls outside contracted hours without penalty. The UK has nothing. Always-on work culture is treated as an inevitable feature of modern employment, not a problem to be solved. It is time to change that. The right to disconnect should be law, not a perk.

The scale of the problem

A 2024 survey by the TUC found that 67% of UK workers regularly check work emails or messages outside their contracted hours. For many, this is not optional. It is an unspoken expectation, reinforced by managers who send emails late at night and expect responses, by workplace cultures that equate long hours with commitment, and by the fear that setting boundaries will harm career progression.

The technology that was supposed to make work more flexible has instead made it inescapable. Smartphones mean you are always reachable. Email means work follows you home. Messaging apps like Slack and Teams blur the line between work and personal time. The result is a culture where being "always on" is normalised, and those who push back are seen as uncommitted or difficult.

This is not flexibility. It is the erosion of personal time, unpaid overtime dressed up as professionalism, and a recipe for burnout.

The health cost: burnout is not a personal failing

The mental and physical health impacts of always-on work culture are well documented. Research by CIPD and mental health charities has linked excessive work hours and lack of downtime to increased rates of stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout. The Health and Safety Executive's own data shows work-related stress is one of the leading causes of sickness absence in the UK.

Burnout is not a personal failing or a sign of weakness. It is a predictable consequence of sustained overwork and lack of recovery time. The human brain and body need rest. When work intrudes into evenings, weekends, and holidays, there is no time to recover. Performance degrades, health suffers, and eventually people break.

The cost is not just personal. It is economic. Burned-out workers are less productive, take more sick leave, and are more likely to quit. The always-on culture that employers think is driving performance is actually undermining it.

"We have created a work culture where being constantly available is seen as dedication, when in reality it is a sign of poor boundaries and unsustainable expectations. The right to disconnect is not about laziness. It is about basic human sustainability." — A view increasingly reflected in workplace wellbeing research by CIPD and others.

The international evidence: it works

France introduced a legal right to disconnect in 2017, requiring companies with more than 50 employees to negotiate policies that limit out-of-hours contact. The law does not ban urgent communication. It establishes that routine availability outside working hours is not an expectation.

The results have been positive. Workers report better work-life balance, and there is no evidence of reduced productivity or competitiveness. France remains one of the most productive economies in Europe, measured by output per hour worked. The idea that always-on culture is necessary for economic success is simply false.

Ireland followed in 2021 with a Code of Practice giving employees the right to disconnect, and Portugal went further in 2022, making it illegal for employers to contact workers outside working hours except in emergencies. Both have seen similar outcomes: improved wellbeing with no economic downside.

The UK is lagging. We have no legal protection, no code of practice, and a government that treats this as a matter for individual employers rather than a systemic issue requiring legislation.

The voluntary approach does not work

Some UK employers have introduced their own right-to-disconnect policies. This is welcome, but it is not enough. Voluntary policies are inconsistent, often poorly enforced, and do nothing for the majority of workers whose employers have no such policies.

More fundamentally, voluntary policies do not address the power imbalance. Even where a policy exists, workers fear that actually using it—ignoring a manager's late-night email, for example—will be seen as a lack of commitment and harm their career. Without legal backing, the right to disconnect is a suggestion, not a protection.

Legislation changes that dynamic. It makes clear that out-of-hours availability is not a default expectation, and it gives workers the confidence to assert boundaries without fear of penalty. It also creates a level playing field, so that employers who respect boundaries are not disadvantaged relative to those who exploit their workers' time.

The objections: flexibility and emergencies

The standard objection is that some jobs require flexibility, and emergencies happen. This is true, but it is not an argument against the right to disconnect. It is an argument for defining what counts as an emergency and what does not.

A genuine emergency—a server outage, a safety incident, a client crisis—justifies out-of-hours contact. A routine email that could wait until tomorrow does not. The right to disconnect does not ban the former. It prevents the latter from becoming normalised.

Flexibility is also not the same as constant availability. Flexible working means having control over when and where you work. Always-on culture is the opposite: it means having no control, because work can intrude at any time. True flexibility requires boundaries, not the absence of them.

The productivity myth

There is a persistent belief, particularly among older managers, that long hours and constant availability signal commitment and drive productivity. The evidence does not support this.

Research into productivity and working time, including studies by the OECD and UK productivity bodies, consistently finds that long hours are associated with diminishing returns. After a certain point, additional hours produce less output per hour, and the cumulative effects of fatigue reduce overall effectiveness.

Countries with shorter working hours and stronger work-life balance protections—Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries—have higher productivity per hour worked than the UK. The idea that we need to work longer and be constantly available to compete is not supported by the data. It is a cultural assumption, and it is wrong.

What the law should look like

A UK right to disconnect law should include three key elements.

First, a default rule that employees are not required to respond to work communications outside contracted hours. This does not ban contact, but it establishes that responding is optional unless there is a genuine emergency.

Second, a duty on employers to negotiate and publish clear policies on out-of-hours contact. This should include what counts as an emergency, how urgent contact will be handled, and protections against penalising workers who disconnect.

Third, enforcement mechanisms. Workers should be able to raise grievances if they are penalised for asserting their right to disconnect, and employment tribunals should have the power to award compensation where employers breach the rules.

This is not radical. It is a basic protection that already exists in multiple European countries and has been shown to work.

The political barriers

The reason the UK does not have this law is not that it is unworkable or economically damaging. It is that it challenges the power of employers to set the terms of work, and governments are reluctant to intervene.

There is also a cultural factor. The UK has a long-hours work culture, particularly in certain sectors like finance, law, and consulting, where working late and being constantly available is seen as a badge of honour. Changing that requires not just legislation but a shift in attitudes.

But attitudes follow law as much as law follows attitudes. When France introduced the right to disconnect, it was controversial. Now it is normalised. The same can happen here.

The bottom line

The right to disconnect is not about laziness or a lack of commitment. It is about basic human sustainability. Always-on work culture is burning people out, harming productivity, and eroding the boundary between work and life. Voluntary policies are not enough. We need legislation that establishes clear boundaries, protects workers who assert them, and creates a level playing field for employers. France, Ireland, and Portugal have shown it can be done. The UK should follow.