The right to disconnect refers to a worker’s right to disengage from work and refrain from engaging in work-related electronic communications such as emails. A “right to disconnect” and not read or respond to work-related communications is being recognised in more countries
Earlier that same year, his team was having dinner to celebrate the end of an intense month of projects when their manager called around 8pm, asking them to start work on a new assignment. The manager even drove to their dinner spot to take them back to office. This can be hard to reconcile. But the questions raised in the process can be an opportunity to re-examine our relationships with our jobs, and to reach a more intentional agreement about what we expect of ourselves and each other at work.The right to disconnect, sometimes called the right to switch off, emerged in response to technology allowing us to be online at all hours, making the boundaries between personal and professional time and space even more porous.
New guidelines on flexible work arrangements will come into effect this year, though a right-to-disconnect law is not believed to be in the works. Instead, arrangements around PMEs’ work hours are largely a matter of contract and depend on the terms of their employment, said the partner at Simmons & Simmons.
The Singapore National Employers Federation said having a policy on after-hours communications can help to set reasonable and clear expectations for workers. “At the same time, the tripartite partners are pushing for greater adoption of work-life harmony measures such as health and wellness programmes, and unrecorded time-off for personal and family matters,” Minister of State for Manpower Gan Siow Huang said in February.
“For most SME bosses who run their own businesses, there is often little or no clear segregation of work and life,” said Mr Lee Swee Siong, vice-president of strategy and development in the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises Council.Company size aside, some sectors present unique challenges.
“Singapore’s sole resource is our human resource, upon which all our success has been built,” he said. “If our workforce weakens, our competitiveness and attractiveness as an economy weakens. And this threatens our continued ability to sustain our way of life.”