You, like our specialist Employment Law team at Stephens Scown may have been watching with interest the Government’s recent proposals around the Right to Switch Off.
For very busy HR Directors and HR teams this may feel something of a pipe dream. Something you’d love to personally see more of, but not something that you can ever see as being for you. The demanding and ad hoc nature of dealing with people issues (which always seem to arise at inopportune times), while driving forward your people strategy in an ever-evolving business environment, means that many HR teams are stretched and working lots of hours to get the job done. This is often a testament to how much you care about the work you do.
This is replicated across many other roles including business owners, senior leaders and those who provide professional services. How could it be possible to meet client needs and keep a business running successfully if you or your team can’t send out of hours emails without fear of reprisal? How are you going to feel if your team all say they won’t work out of hours and that just leaves you at the top doing all the evening and weekend work? How do you genuinely thank colleagues for going above and beyond (and working late) on a project without inadvertently building a long hours culture?
This is a tricky and emotive subject. But an important one to get right if you want to build and maintain high performing teams that are happy, healthy and have the resilience to continue to be high performing for years to come. It leads back to culture – what type of business do you want to be? What type of experience do you want your colleagues to have in your workplace? Being employee owned and a certificated B CorpTM, this is a topic close to our heart at Stephens Scown. Which is why at our away day last week (October 2024) our Employment and Immigration team bravely opened up this pandora’s box to explore what Right to Switch Off meant to us. What did we find?
The pros and cons of working post Covid
The pandemic has reshaped how employees worked. We have a much greater flexibility on when and where we work: but this has blurred the boundary of our work and home life. As a client obsessed team who take great pride in meeting our clients’ needs, we have created more flexibility in the working day but also moved more to being ‘always available’, with increasing numbers of us working evenings, weekends, on scheduled holidays and on our non-working days (if working part-time).
This can take a toll in terms of wellbeing, health and happiness. It also can impact on quality: high performing teams need rest and creative/strategic thinking time to do their best work. Olympic athletes don’t train all the time – they rest too.
We (and we suspect many other businesses) concluded we needed to balance doing great work with having fun and taking care of ourselves and each other.
What is proposed by the Government?
Labour first mentioned the right to disconnect in 2021 Green Paper “A New Deal for Working People’’. It was described as “a new right to disconnect from work outside of working hours and not be contacted by their employer.”
In the pre-election ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’, Labour said this would include:
- The ability to switch-off outside normal office hours.
- The right to enjoy undisturbed/ free time away from work.
- The right to disengage in work-related communications outside of normal working hours.
Labour said they wish to give ‘‘workers and employers the opportunity to have constructive conversations and work together on bespoke workplace policies or contractual terms that benefit both parties’’.
There have been suggestions that this could be enacted via a code of practice requiring employers to implement Right to Switch Off Policies, with each policy being specific to each workplace. As a minimum it is likely that UK employers will be required to engage with staff about a right to disconnect, to come up with appropriate guidelines. It has been recognised that a one-size-fits-all policy is unlikely to work across all sectors in the UK.
However, this has not formed part of the new Employment Rights Bill introduced on 10 October 2024, so any legislation on this is currently on the back burner. The government has however committed to implementing this in the future. The details of this (and how draconian it may be) remain to be seen.
A statutory right prohibiting employees working outside of their contracted hours could pose serious issues for many sectors including those working on a global scale or in fast moving industries such as tech. Additionally, employers functioning in these fields may argue that working unusual hours is a justified ask as senior employees are paid and rewarded well for the uncontracted hours they work. Blanket legislation may risk impeding on flexible working arrangements which employees have built with employers.
So, while Labour’s intention is to prevent employees from being exploited, it is vital they appreciate the unique relationships employees hold with their employers and the potential impact across all businesses in the UK.
Practical Application by our team
Although the legislation is on hold, our team found it a really useful exercise to have a constructive conversation about this and look at what ‘safety rails’ we might need for an informal team policy. We looked at whether there were any ‘absolutes’ (like no one should be working when on annual leave), where the grey areas were (like out of hours working) and how we could balance client, team and our own needs. We also used this as an opportunity to remind ourselves of our hybrid working guidelines and to look at team efficiencies and practices. What were we tolerating that was holding us back? How could we each support each other to work most efficiently in our working hours?
We openly recognised that in our line of work, sometimes client, court/Tribunal or team needs mean we must work outside of our contracted hours. We recognised that we wanted to ensure that this was not the norm all the time and that we needed to be mindful to spot and address negative overworking habits that had built up post Covid, particularly where it is so easy to carry on working at night from home. Having recruited some excellent new colleagues into the team (like new partner, Matt Huggett) we felt positive that we now had the capacity and ability to again focus on working ’smarter’ and to avoid a long hours culture. Part of the joy of working in the South West is to have the time to enjoy it! Nothing beats a walk on the beach after work.
We’d love to know if you have had similar discussions in your team? We would be happy to share our experiences and help you shape your own Right to Switch Off guidelines.
We speak from our own experience that this will help communication in your team and strengthen your company values and culture, whilst supporting your team’s wellbeing and work life balance.
Contact our Employment team if you wish to discuss anything mentioned in this article.