California lawmaker looks to enshrine a ‘right to disconnect’ from work

Connie Britton’s Nicole in HBO’s first season of White Lotus could not disconnect from work. At a fancy resort in picturesque Hawaii, the corporate exec was constantly checking her emails, and even participated in a “Zoom with China,” asking her daughter to help her improve the “feng shui” in their hotel room ahead of the video call. (Been there.)

While Nicole was a girl boss, she also epitomized the strain that a constant connection to work can cause in our personal lives and amongst our family.

Golden State lawmaker Matt Haney has something to say about that. This month, the San Francisco assemblyman introduced a “right to disconnect” bill. The measure would protect employees from dealing with their bosses outside of “working hours.”

The bill mandates that all employers in California “create and publish company-wide action plans” to protect the new right to disconnect and outline what working and non-working hours are for employees. The measure carves out exceptions for emergencies, and it directs the state’s Labor Commissioner to fine employers who “exhibit a pattern” of violations.

“Work has changed drastically compared to what it was just ten years ago. Smartphones have blurred the boundaries between work and home life,” Haney said in a statement. “People have to be able to spend time with their families without being constantly interrupted at the dinner table or their kids’ birthday party, worried about their phones and responding to work.”

Mobile devices and the pandemic-fueled expansion of WFH may have blurred the lines between work and life, which can be especially true for knowledge workers.

“Managers, people managers in particular, got really comfortable calling you at seven, eight o’clock at night,” Johnny C. Taylor, president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), told HR Brew. “Not because they were trying to work you to death, but it was because we all got comfortable doing that during the pandemic.”

During the pandemic, Microsoft’s Worklab discovered a new period of the day when knowledge workers peaked in productivity, dubbing the new phenomenon the “triple peak” workday.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, a traditional 9-to-5 worker peaked in productivity during the workday just before lunch and again right after, but many WFHers also peak after dinner and before bed, around 6–8 pm.

“It raises the question: Is this about flexibility, or is it about work encroaching on someone’s personal hours?” Microsoft data scientist Shamsi Iqbal said in a post about the findings.

Taylor told HR Brew that SHRM doesn’t support Haney’s measure. A mandate to define working hours, non-working hours, what is and isn’t an emergency, and one that implements penalties when a manager or leader inside the company gets it wrong, could expose California employers to penalties, he said.

“I understand and fully appreciate work-life integration and ensuring that people don’t literally work themselves to death, and that there’s some off-limit times,” he said. “But the idea that you’re gonna have a blanket restriction and no flexibility…undermines that.”

Taylor pointed out that employers with good people practices already know that “people need to recharge” and employees can’t be expected to be available 24/7.

People teams can reinforce this by communicating both the business reasons—time away from work is good for retention and productivity—and the human reasons for creating a culture that establishes reasonable work-life boundaries as well as guidelines for what to do when there’s an urgent issue at work outside of normal working hours, an IT system failure, for example, he said.