Government Weighing Options for a 'Right to Switch Off'

The UK government has pledged to introduce a ‘right to switch off’, allowing employees to separate their work and home lives and potentially making it unlawful for their employer to contact them outside of working hours.

This would include giving employees the choice not to engage with work correspondence, including emails, phone calls and instant messages.

The government included the measure in its ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’ initiative, to avoid working from home resulting “in homes turning into 24/7 offices”.

The plans are about “ensuring people have some time to rest”, a government spokesman said. “It’s obviously one of the central missions of the government to support growth, and we know that productivity is vital to growth.

“It’s about making sure we have the right balance between making the most of the flexible working practices that we saw following the pandemic with also having appropriate arrangements in place to ensure that people can stay productive in light of that.”

According to the Times, employees who are repeatedly called by their managers outside of normal working hours may be entitled to thousands of pounds in compensation at employment tribunals. The newspaper highlights that, while breaking an out-of-hours code of practice is unlikely to result in litigation on its own, employees could use it as an aggravating factor in broader claims.

Ben Smith, a senior associate at employment law firm GQ Littler, commented: “The main risk for employers is going to be finding the right balance for their business and sector – there isn’t going to be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and I expect there is going to be a learning curve for employers.”

Smith said he thought the government won’t create new enforceable rights or claims, so the onus will be on employers to figure out what the right to switch off looks like in their businesses and what policies and safeguards are appropriate to “balance protecting work-life balance and ensuring business continuity and efficacy”.

The policy may be restricted to employers over a certain size and may be supported by an ACAS Code of Practice, the Times reported.