UK proposes giving digital workers the ‘right to switch off’

Britain’s new Labour government is the latest legislature to consider how it might make it easier for digital workers using always-on technologies to turn them off at the end of the working day.

In Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay, published before it won the UK’s July general election, it promised to address the issue, saying “We will bring in the ‘right to switch off’ so working from home does not result in homes turning into 24/7 offices.”

And this week it brought the issue back into the spotlight, with a government spokesperson telling the BBC, “Good employers understand that for workers to stay motivated and productive they do need to be able to switch off, and a culture presenteeism can be damaging to productivity,” a government spokesperson told the BBC on Monday.

In its pre-election publication, the Labour Party said it planned to follow the lead of Ireland and Belgium, “giving workers and employers the opportunity to have constructive conversations and work together on bespoke workplace policies or contractual terms that benefit both parties.”

Other countries — including France and, more recently, Australia — have taken a different approach, setting out stricter conditions for employers to follow.

The government’s sales pitch is to package the plans as good for employers as well as employees.

Productivity is about more than clicks, desk time and responsiveness, and taken to extremes can lead to employee burnout, already an issue in IT.

Pushing employees into an always-on state is bad for everyone in the long run. If employees want to disconnect then they should have the right to ask for that, the government spokesperson said.

The tricky issue will be working out how to apply the principle across the board. An obvious problem is how an organization defines what is and isn’t reasonable across roles that have different demands. What seems unreasonable in one role might not be in another, for example professions connected to critical services or high-pressure decision making.

One response to any new rules might be that organizations more clearly spell out their expectations in employment contracts. The grey areas will be ironed out over time in employment tribunals, which could be expensive for the unwary.

Nice surveillance

What’s not clear is how either side can police such a regime. Inevitably, some bosses will continue to send emails out of hours and expect them to be answered.

That suggests a very different future for the workplace surveillance technology used by some companies.

Ironically, instead of watching to ensure workers are working, surveillance technology might in future be deployed to make sure they are not.

But the days of simply making assumptions about where the line is could now be drawing to a close for organizations. It seems highly unlikely that any future UK government would want to unpick laws specifying limits so this could be the new normal.

Meanwhile, the UK’s productivity per working hour is not impressive — around 18% less than in the US in 2023, according to a recent parliamentary research briefing.

It’s a problem that goes back decades. It’s just that the new government believes that increasing it is about more than being in the office, on the job, or sitting in front of a computer. The underlying assumption behind many employee monitoring tools is that productivity can be measured by mouse and keyboard clicks. When employees are clicking, that equals productivity. When they’re not, the organization is losing out. The tide may now turning against that philosophy.