Ontario’s new law on employees’ right to log out is vague and offers little protection, experts say, but it could still prompt employers to take a hard look at work-life balance in their organizations, from setting up emails out of the office to reducing daily video calls.
The Labor Law for Workers was approved on Tuesday, which includes among its provisions a new law that states that employers with 25 or more employees create a written policy on the right to disconnect from contact by email and calls after hours. usual work. Employers have six months after the law obtains actual consent to abide by it.
Labor Minister Mount McNaughton said the dividing line between personal time and work time became blurred during the pandemic when many white-collar workers began working from home for the first time.
Ontario is the first province to pass a law on the right to disconnect, the minister said. Employers will have to be transparent with employees about their right-to-disconnect policy, he said, and workers can also ask potential new employers about such a policy as part of their interview process.
“The best employers will make sure there is a work-life balance because it will be a competitive advantage for them to retain and attract workers,” McNaughton said.
Alexandra Samuel, author of “Remote Inc.,” said that many people worked remotely before the pandemic and had developed policies and strategies to maintain a healthy balance. However, the large number of workers who suddenly started working remotely in 2020 didn’t have the same experience, he said, and neither did their employers.
“People who worked remotely before the pandemic did not experience the same degree of … burnout that we saw among new remote workers,” Samuel said.
One of the main drivers of that burnout was not simply the pressure to respond to emails after hours. It was the structure of the workday that often led to work after hours, Samuel explained: the culture of the office in person did not translate well at home, and many people found themselves in back-to-back video conferences wasting precious time, while trying to manage his responsibilities at home.
“I think a lot of the overload comes from the fact that written communication is being pushed to the margins by an over-reliance on video calls.”
Some organizations were ahead of the curve when the pandemic began.
Communications firm Edelman Canada, for example, instituted a right-to-disconnect policy in 2013 that urges employees to avoid email traffic between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., said chief operating officer Bianca Boyd.
“By default, seven to seven, so anything outside of that should be the exception rather than the norm,” he said.
When the pandemic began, the policy spread to company offices around the world, Boyd said. The organization also allows people to work hours that are better suited to their own schedules, as long as they respect the right to disconnect from others.
Andrew Caldwell, head of the advisory team at human resources firm Peninsula Canada, said it is not yet clear what this new law will look like in practice, including who might be exempt from the right to disconnect.
“It is this vague idea that has spread, but there is still no substance behind it,” he said.
The law does not dictate the content of the policy, Caldwell said, so employers will have to determine what their policy should include. He suggests that organizations use out-of-office emails to make it clear when someone is unavailable and outline emergency exceptions to the rule.
Samuel said that any organization looking to improve its policies on work-life balance should consider not only the right to disconnect outside of work hours, but also what those work hours are and how they should be spent. For example, some people may want to work an hour or two at night and run a few errands during the day, he said. Others may find it easier to break off communication at 6 pm if they have fewer video conferences cluttering their schedule.
“Organizations are using the back-to-office transition as an opportunity to develop coherent strategies and policies around hybrid work, which also then create some more thoughtful remote work arrangements,” Samuel said.
He cautions that it’s still a mixed bag: “I think it’s been a combination of organizations that put in place explicit policies, managers that got smarter and less controlling about how they support their team members, and then individuals that figure out the strategies they can do. use for your own work. ”
Labor attorney Jon Pinkus believes that the law itself is “ineffective,” too vague to hold employers accountable.
“It doesn’t set minimum standards on what … the right to disconnect has to be,” Pinkus said. “It really does impose a procedural obligation on the employer without imposing any substantive obligation.”
Without more specific minimum standards, Pinkus is not confident that the law will have a significant impact on most employees. Still, he acknowledged that it will likely prompt some employers to take this policy seriously and listen to employee concerns.
“I think employers who are potentially inclined to do something can use this as a kind of wake-up call,” Pinkus said.
McNaughton called the law “a start” and left the door open for future adjustments or specific provisions to be added to the law.
Reference-www.thestar.com