The right to disconnect

Professional phone calls in the evening or during the holidays, urgent emails in the middle of the night, incessant notifications from various professional tools... With teleworking and new technologies that allow us to be reachable at all times, the border between professional and personal life is increasingly blurred or even non-existent (Read our article on “blurring”).

However, the right to disconnect is supposed to protect it. We explain to you how to approach the right to disconnect within your company.

What is the right to disconnect?

In the absence of a definition, the law assigns its objectives to ensure respect for rest and leave periods, to guarantee the balance between professional life and personal and family life and finally to protect the health of employees.

Concretely, The purpose of the right to disconnect is to set time slots during which an employee has the right to be disconnected of its digital tools and therefore to be unreachable.

Established by the law known as the “Labor Law” of 8 August 2016, the right to disconnect has been in force since 1 January 2017. It is enshrined in article L. 2242-17 of the Labor Code. The aim of this law is to adapt employment law to the digital age.

In addition, on January 21, 2021, the European Parliament adopted a resolution to protect and recognize the right to disconnect outside of working hours.

How to implement the right to disconnect within your company?

The Labor Code does not define the rules governing the right to disconnect and provides that these rules are determined at the company level through an employer-employee agreement, as part of collective bargaining on the quality of life at work and on the establishment by the company of mechanisms to regulate the use of digital tools.

This negotiation takes place every year (or at least once every four years if an agreement provides for a different frequency of mandatory negotiations) for all companies where there is trade union representation. These are generally businesses with more than 50 employees.

In the absence of agreement, especially in companies with less than 50 employees, the employer must draw up a charter, after consulting the Social and Economic Committee. This charter must define the modalities for exercising the right to disconnect. These may be, for example:

• the definition of fixed time slots who teleworking employees must be reachable;

• the activation of automatic messengers and the reorientation of messages during the absence of the collaborator;

• devices for Standby computer servers outside of working hours;

• an automatic email signature indicating the Non-imperative nature of a response immediate;

• instructions for Do not respond to emails or to calls outside of working hours;

• training teams and managers to make more reasonable use of digital tools.

It should be noted that no sanctions are provided for the employer who has not implemented the legal provisions on the right to disconnect. However, he may be sanctioned if he has not respected his obligation to negotiate on the quality of life at work or if he does not respect the duration of the employee's rest.

Overview of the right to disconnect among our European neighbors, and the example of the Portuguese

France is the first country to have adopted a law on disconnection.

At the time, while some laughed at it, many had the envy of it. Since then, and with the generalization of teleworking, other countries have followed the example (Italy) and have even gone further (Portugal). Others are still very late (Germany and Belgium).

Indeed, in recent days, Portugal has strengthened its measures in favor of the right to disconnect. From now on, employers with more than 10 employees will no longer have the right to contact their employees, by e-mail or by telephone, on weekends and public holidays, under penalty of being exposed to heavy fines. These are indexed to their turnover and can range between €613 and €9,690.

This measure follows other measures relating to teleworking taken at the beginning of November: now, parents with children under the age of eight have the right to telework without asking their employer for permission and the costs associated with teleworking (electricity, internet) must be borne by the employer.

In addition, the latter is required to organize face-to-face meetings at least every two months, in order to combat the loneliness of employees.

In Italy, since May 13, 2021, according to law no. 61/2021 (paragraph 1-ter of article 2), the worker who carries out his activity remotely has “the right to disconnect from technological equipment and computer platforms, in accordance with the agreements signed by the parties and without prejudice to any agreed availability period”.

This law expressly provides that the exercise of the right to disconnect cannot affect wages or workplace relationships.

Germany was one of the first countries to consider the right to disconnect. As early as 1999, employees had the right to refuse any contact with their employer during sick leave. Although there is no official legislation, some private companies have led the way with radical solutions such as blocking communication servers between certain hours.

In Belgium, article 16 of the law of 26 March 2018 provides that “in order to ensure respect for workers' rest periods, annual vacations and other holidays and to maintain the balance between work and private life, the employer must organize a consultation within the Committee for Prevention and Protection at Work at regular intervals and whenever the workers' representatives on the Committee request it, on the subject of disconnection from work., and the use of digital means of communication.”

This law therefore does not establish a right to disconnect but rather an agreement that could be considered within the company.

m-work and the right to disconnect

The start-up M-Work, specialized in hybrid work, offers a solution that supports companies in their remote work management. Our platform allows them to plan and monitor the experience of employees working remotely. We provide you with tools to alert you to weak signals in order to ensure the smooth functioning of your remote work. Are you interested in the subject? Discover our solutions.