Right to disconnect: Your legal obligations explained

It can be hard to set work boundaries in a hyper-connected world, but the new right to disconnect law is designed to help employees draw a clear line and switch off after hours.  

The law came into effect on 26 August 2024, to give employees the right to ignore work communications after they’ve clocked off for the day. Is this a blanket ban on contacting your employees after work? And how can you ensure you comply with the law? We’ve asked an employment lawyer for guidance.

The right to disconnect gives employees the right to reasonably refuse contact from their employer or a third party, such as a client, customer or supplier, outside their normal working hours. This means they can choose not to check or respond to work emails or texts, or to pick up work calls.

“The right to disconnect law is trying to ensure that employees are able to switch off, and they come in response to the increased connectivity that came with work-from-home arrangements necessitated by COVID restrictions,” says Andrew Jewell, principal at Jewell Hancock Employment Lawyers.

This is where the legislation is short on detail, as it’s unclear what would be an ‘unreasonable’ refusal.

“‘Unreasonable’ is not defined and will be reliant on the facts of the individual circumstances, but it might include genuine work demands,” says Jewell. 

“For example, if a lawyer is working before a trial or an accountant is working at tax time, or if there are other staffing issues, such as an increased absence amongst colleagues due to illness.”

While the right to disconnect law does not prohibit you from contacting employees outside of regular work hours, Jewell says you will need to reconsider how you will engage with your workforce. And you can’t penalise your employees if they exercise their right.

“Employers will need to be careful with outside-of-work contact, especially if an employee seeks to exercise their right to disconnect, both in dealing with the exercise and ensuring there is no suggestion of poor treatment following an exercise,” he says.

To avoid problems arising, it may be wise to discuss the new law with your employees and to highlight any special circumstances where it could be reasonable to expect them to respond to work communication after hours. For example, if your business experiences a critical IT outage in the evening, you may require your technical engineer to respond to contact out their normal working hours, so you should make this clear.

If disputes arise, the legislation states that it should first be dealt with “at the workplace level by discussions” between workers and their employer. If that’s unsuccessful, Jewell says the Fair Work Commission can step in.

“There is a new jurisdiction of the Fair Work Commission, which will deal with disputes regarding the right to disconnect, and terms regarding the right are being included in modern awards, which will allow employees to bring disputes to the Federal Courts,” he says.

The law now applies to businesses with more than 15 employees. If you’re a smaller business, your employees will have the same right to disconnect from 22 August 2025.

“The main exception is for small businesses, which won’t have to consider the right to disconnect at this stage, however they may wish to follow the spirit of the law given employees will have an increased expectation of their right to disconnect,” says Jewell.

Jewell says that while there are no formal guidelines to adhere to, the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Fair Work Commission have provided advice to help employers and employees comply. They also provide more information about the law.

The right to disconnect law is designed to help employees set a clear boundary between their work and personal lives by ignoring work-related contact outside their working hours, unless doing so is unreasonable. The legislation doesn’t clearly define ‘unreasonable’, so it’s a good idea to talk to your employees about special circumstances so that the new law can work for everyone.