The Right to Disconnect Requires Proactive Leadership

Last week here in Australia, the new Right to Disconnect laws came into play. For those who might not have heard or aren’t across the details, the law states: 

Employees of non-small business employers* have the right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact (or attempted contact) outside their working hours, unless doing so is unreasonable. *Those with 15 employees or more 

There has been plenty of commentary over the last week now that these are enforceable. Many business owners and leaders are worried about some of the ramifications and impact these new laws might bring.  

If you're a good leader and doing the right thing, you won’t have anything to worry about. Laws like this are designed to stop people from doing the wrong thing. If you are doing the right thing, you are leading well and you are creating an environment that brings the best out of people, you won’t have any problems. 

One of the big questions people are asking is, what is reasonable? The law recognises that what's reasonable in your business may not be reasonable in another. As a result, there is a high degree of flexibility built in. In determining what is reasonable, you have to consider the circumstances within the business, the personal circumstances of the employee, as well as the role, responsibilities and remuneration of the employee.  

This degree of flexibility is a good thing. However, it also creates a degree of ambiguity and uncertainty.  

IS YOUR LENS HELPFUL OR HARMFUL? 

The default for many people is to view these new laws through the lens of rights, whether they be human rights or workplace rights. That is only natural given the title of the very title of these laws. The problem with focusing on rights is that it's all about the restriction of relationships. When we focus on rights we are restricting how one party engages with another, or forcing one party to engage in a particular way. That restriction removes freedom in the relationship. It undermines much of the ownership that people have in that engagement. It also erodes trust. Rights only exist to protect people from those they do not trust.  

Approaching situations from a rights lens often results in a power struggle. You end up with each party pursuing their rights. Often the perception that the other party's rights will impinge on their own. You get into this competition and power struggle that erodes trust and destroys the relationship.  

Counterintuitively, a rights lens is actually quite disempowering for the very people who those rights are supposed to protect. Because rights are all about what someone else does to you, which is outside your control. If you have no control over it, you have no power over it. It is, therefore, very easy for a victim mindset to materialise.  

It is much healthier to look at the world through a responsible lens. Responsibilities are about what you do proactively to contribute to a relationship. In every relationship, whether workplace-based or more social in nature, each party has responsibilities around the contribution that they make. In the workplace, the business and its leaders have a responsibility to create an environment that facilitates employees doing their best work. Employees have a responsibility to the business to do their best while they are at work. If everybody took their responsibility seriously, rights become a moot point.  

WHAT NOT TO DO 

What you don't want to do is wait for a problem to arise or a precedent to be set. You need to be proactive, get on the front foot and have the conversation to determine what's reasonable in your business.  

If you wait for a problem to arise - by this I mean a problem between you and one of your team members where you reach out and contact them after hours and they ignore it resulting in a negative outcome for the business - then try to address the issue, you aren’t setting yourself up for success. Your team member will be on the defensive, you're going to be ticked off and neither of you is going to be in the right head space to negotiate the expectations around what is reasonable. A scenario like that is just going to put a strain on your working relationship.  

Over the next year, we are guaranteed to see a string of cases before the courts as both businesses and employees test what is reasonable in the eyes of the law. If you wait for legal precedent to be set, your employees will take some precedent from another business, in another industry and another set of circumstances, and seek to apply it to your business. Chances are that the precedent’s interpretation of what is reasonable won’t be the best fit or as favourable for your business. 

SO WHAT DO YOU DO? 

You can avoid all of that by simply being proactive, initiating the conversation and discussing what is reasonable outside-of-hours contact in your business.  

If you wait for a problem to arise emotions will be charged and neither you nor your staff will be in the best head space to deal with it. If you are willing to have the conversation with your team while everybody's calm and has a cool head, the clarity of thinking is going to be much greater and people are going to be more rational and more logical. You will probably find they will also be more lenient when you start negotiating the expectations around what is reasonable in your specific context. 

The result of proactively initiating this conversation with your staff will be greater confidence in communication, more alignment in approach and a reinforcement of relationship rather than a restriction.  That will be so much better for you, your team and your business. 

You can see these laws as a significant risk to your business. A risk that your staff are going to do the wrong thing and cause problems. Or you can see them as an opportunity to improve your leadership, for you to take responsibility and be proactive. These laws present an opportunity to improve the environment that you're creating in your business.  

So how will you approach these new laws? As in most things, the mindset you adopt will determine the outcome you achieve. The choice is yours. But be intentional about that choice, don't just sit back and do nothing.