AMERICA RANKED 53RD IN RIGHT TO DISCONNECT?
Australia is the most recent country to enact ‘Right to Disconnect’ legislation. This concept hasn’t been embraced here in America… as yet. So what does this really mean and how does it affect the way we work, our work ethic and our leadership behavior?
First of all, if you’re not familiar with the ‘Right to Disconnect’ concept, in a nutshell, it means that employees have the right to disconnect from their work when their workday is over and this includes during weekends, statutory holidays and vacation time. This limits employers from being able to contact, communicate or otherwise cause employees to work in any form, or fashion during these ‘off’ hours.
Is it a good idea? And how will this affect organizations working across time zones?
When an organization works across multiple time zones it gets complicated. Global collaboration always means that at least one, or more, of the team members and, or leaders will be in an ‘off’ hours situation during others workday.?
Obviously, communication still needs to happen, and ultimately, it’s up to leaders and their team members to work out both practical and respectful arrangements.?
This is an area where Optevo provides a good solution to the challenge, allowing both real-time communication and also the ability to mute notifications during ‘off hours’.? This means that communications can be sent during one parties workday, yet prevent the recipient from being disturbed during ‘off hours’, yet allow them to respond during their workday.
Why are more and more countries opting for this kind of legislation?? And how do employers feel about this?
Let’s take a look at who’s currently ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’ of this particular policy. According to this LinkedIn news post “Australia will gain membership into an exclusive global club established by France in 2017 . Belgium, Germany and Italy are also members, and the European Parliament is considering similar legislation for all 27 partner states.
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According to another post , ?“Employers will still have legitimate reasons to reach out after hours, but the expectation for immediate responses without compensation is shifting.”
What do you think about this??
While I’m all for creating a life-work balance - you might remember that Optevo’s vision is to ‘ensure that your work life doesn’t become your life’s work’ - organizations with on-site, hybrid and remote workers across the globe will need to deal with these issues sooner, or later. Fortunately, the amazing Optevo team is way ahead of the game. Our experience in helping facilitate work, wherever, and whenever, you might work, has led us to develop a very clever solution that takes care of this dilemma, plus several more.? It’s the ‘mute notifications’ function I mentioned earlier.? This allows you to mute notifications on any and all communications via the Optevo platform.? When you’re off work, unavailable, doing deep work, in a meeting, on a call, or for any other reason you cannot, or do not want to be hassled with constant dings and pings.
When you enable the ‘mute notifications’ function, if anyone sends you a direct message, tags you in a comment, or updates a WorkPod that you are participating in, Optevo will let the individual(s) know you are unavailable and will not be receiving notifications at this time.? You can easily switch it on, and off, allowing you to choose if you receive notifications and interact with your fellow WorkPod members in real-time or asynchronously.
This solves the problem of employers who need to contact employees at odd hours, or during their ‘off’ hours. They can send the notifications when it suits them and their employee can receive and respond to them during their workday. It’s the quintessential win-win solution. Once again, the parameters for how and when to communicate need to be decided upon by the individual organization and their teams. It’s never going to be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ situation.?
America may be ranked 53rd in the ‘Right to Disconnect’ legislation department, but we’re in 1st place when it comes to developing solutions to workplace challenges.
#RightToDisconnect #LifeWorkBalance
CEO l Entrepreneur l Woman Business Owner l CSM I & II | CSPO
8 个月Balancing work and personal life is crucial, but implementing such policies might indeed be complex, especially in diverse work environments.?
The Myth Slayer?? Transformational Coach for Attorneys ?? 2x TEDx Speaker ?? Ignite Rebirth, Inspiration, & Bold Impact ?? I Want Your Future to Be EPIC!
8 个月Andre Williams: as always, you make a great, truly human-centric case for Optevo and its values to both employers and employees. Perhaps because I spent decades in organizations that routinely dealt with crises or emergencies or running operations where IT, facility, security, or other needs didn't simply stop because it was 5pm, I'm not particularly fond of this sort of legislation. It also doesn't acknowledge the clock-watcher phenomenon endemic within organizations; I literally had press inquires about potential scandals go unanswered because the person best able to respond decided they didn't want to return calls after a certain hour. Also, what about professionals like the law, where the workload is so demanding and the court or government oversight demands are so massive that just disappearing after 5pm or some other time could literally lead to sanctions (event planning is another such profession). IMO, this sort of legislation sounds humanistic and positive and may work for a limited number of jobs, but it's not realistic, especially if the USA wants to stay competitive. What corporations or individual leaders choose to do, of course, is another matter. This is more complex than a legislative solution can accommodate.
Chief Experience Officer at billquiseng.com. Award-winning Customer CARE Expert, Keynote Speaker, and Blogger
8 个月Andre Williams, I appreciate you sharing your insight??FULL article. And as my virtual leadership mentor, I very much appreciate you. While I applaud your team's achievements to "mute notifications", with great respect, I don't feel that many corporate businesses will be open to your solutions that enhance an employee's work-life balance. With their "profits over people" mindset, many corporate business leaders will disavow any solutions by Optevo that would reduce their profits while improving their employees' work-life balance. Optevo is in the first place when it develops solutions to workplace challenges, but how many companies have accepted Optevo's solutions compared to those that have not? I'm sure there are only a few compared to the many "profits over people" companies. And that is why government legislatures have "enacted the right to disconnect". The senior legislators, a.k.a. senators, congressmen, and parliamentary members, already have a right to disconnect when they have staffers and aides committed?24/7 to the legislators.?The right to disconnect will never solve the problem of "profits over people" employers. That is the reason why legislators must enact such laws. The people's government over corporate greed.
Fractional Chief of Staff | Strategic Advisor | Empowering CEOs/Founders to Design Human-Centered Organizations and Achieve Personal + Performance Excellence | Open to Fractional Chief of Staff Roles
8 个月Great post Andre Williams with much to consider by leaders as they navigate this unprecedented time in the workplace. I for one am not a fan of legislation. Especially legislation that deems to delegate a power that should already be mine ??. Usually when govts craft legislation that somehow protect us it usually turns into much more. And usually much more to their benefit. As with legislation in the US it can be a 2000 page document. Far too complex and convoluted. As Steve Jobs said, “When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.” I vote for more of that and less legislation.
Training Management, Delivery and Leadership, Senior Training Instructor, Leader and Coach
8 个月Many great points here, Andre ?? Once again you've written a compelling article that highlights a real problem and then come up with some practical ideas ?? and ways to solve many of the problems. Bearing in mind that there certainly is no one size fits all I believe and agree with your argument for clear defined expectations, open communication and r.e.s.p.e.c.t. from all parties.