The Right to Disconnect: Should It Be Illegal to Email Staff on Leave?

It is 9:47 PM on a Tuesday. You are sitting on the sofa watching television when your phone lights up with a Slack notification from your manager. "Quick question about the Henderson report - can you send me the latest figures?" It is not urgent. It could wait until morning. But now you have seen it, and you know your manager has seen that you have seen it. So you open your laptop, find the file, and send it across. Twenty minutes later you are back on the sofa, but the mental shift has happened. You are no longer off. You are on call, just without the pay or the formal acknowledgement.

Now imagine the same scenario, but you are on annual leave. You are halfway through a week in Cornwall with your family. The notification arrives, and suddenly your holiday has a crack in it. You might respond. You might not. Either way, you are now thinking about the Henderson report instead of the beach.

Across Europe, governments have decided that this is not acceptable. A growing number of countries have introduced "right to disconnect" laws that make it illegal - or at least formally discouraged - for employers to contact staff outside their working hours. France led the way in 2017. Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Ireland, and Italy followed. Australia joined in 2024. The European Parliament passed a resolution calling for an EU-wide right to disconnect. The trend is unmistakable, and it raises a question that UK businesses cannot afford to ignore: should we be doing this too?

What Is the Right to Disconnect?

The right to disconnect is a legal principle that gives employees the right to not engage with work-related communications outside their contracted working hours. In practice, this means employers cannot require, expect, or penalise employees for not responding to emails, messages, calls, or other work communications during evenings, weekends, holidays, or any other period when they are not scheduled to work.

The core idea is simple: if you are not being paid to work, you should not be expected to work. When your contracted hours end, your obligation to be available ends with them. When you are on annual leave, you are on leave - not "on leave but reachable." The right to disconnect formalises something that should be obvious but has been steadily eroded by smartphones, email, Slack, Teams, and the always-on culture they enable.

How Europe Is Leading the Way

France (2017)

France was the first country to legislate. The El Khomri Law (Labour Reform Act), effective from January 2017, requires companies with 50 or more employees to negotiate a charter defining the right to disconnect. Employers must establish the hours during which staff are not expected to send or respond to emails and must negotiate these boundaries with employee representatives. While the law does not prescribe specific penalties, it creates a framework for employees to raise grievances and for labour courts to consider out-of-hours contact when assessing workplace disputes. In 2018, a French court awarded a former employee EUR 60,000 in part because his employer had required him to keep his phone on at all times - the first significant enforcement of the right to disconnect.

Spain (2018)

Spain's Organic Law on Data Protection and Digital Rights (Article 88) explicitly recognises the right to digital disconnection in the workplace. Employers must create an internal policy, developed in consultation with employee representatives, that defines how the right to disconnect will be respected. The law specifically mentions the right to "guarantee, outside of legally or conventionally established working time, respect for the rest time, leave, and holidays of workers." Spain's legislation is broader than France's in that it applies to all companies regardless of size.

Portugal (2021)

Portugal went further than any previous country. Following the pandemic-driven explosion of remote work, the Portuguese government passed legislation in November 2021 that makes it illegal for employers to contact workers outside their contracted hours. Employers who violate this can be fined. The law also requires employers to contribute to employees' home working expenses (electricity, internet) and explicitly prohibits monitoring employees at home. Portugal's approach was the most prescriptive in Europe at the time and was a direct response to the blurring of work-life boundaries during COVID-19 lockdowns.

Belgium (2022)

Belgium introduced a right to disconnect for civil servants in February 2022, with plans to extend it to the private sector. Federal government employees cannot be contacted outside working hours except in "exceptional and unforeseen circumstances." Managers who routinely contact staff outside hours can face disciplinary consequences. Belgium's phased approach - starting with the public sector before extending to the private sector - has been noted as a pragmatic model for implementation.

Ireland (2021)

Ireland adopted a Code of Practice on the Right to Disconnect in April 2021. While not legally binding in the same way as French or Portuguese law, the Irish code establishes three key rights: the right to not routinely work outside normal hours, the right to not be penalised for refusing to attend to work outside normal hours, and the duty to respect another person's right to disconnect. The code is admissible as evidence in Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudication hearings, giving it practical enforcement teeth even without being primary legislation.

Australia (2024)

Australia became the first major non-European country to introduce a right to disconnect, effective from August 2024 under the Fair Work Legislation Amendment. Employees at businesses with 15 or more staff have the legal right to refuse to monitor, read, or respond to work-related communications outside their working hours, unless the refusal is "unreasonable." The Fair Work Commission can issue orders to prevent employers from penalising employees who exercise this right, with fines of up to AUD 18,780 for individuals and AUD 93,900 for corporations.

The Evidence: Why Disconnecting Matters

The push for right-to-disconnect legislation is not based on sentiment. It is backed by a substantial body of evidence linking out-of-hours contact with measurable harm to employee health, productivity, and retention.

Burnout and Mental Health

A 2021 study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found that the mere expectation of having to respond to work communications outside hours - even without actual messages - was significantly associated with emotional exhaustion, work-family conflict, and reduced psychological detachment from work. The researchers termed this "anticipatory stress": the knowledge that a message could arrive at any moment keeps the brain in a state of low-level vigilance that prevents genuine recovery. A 2023 report by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) found that workers who regularly dealt with work communications outside hours were 1.7 times more likely to report poor mental health than those who did not.

Sleep Quality

A 2014 study in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes found that using a smartphone for work in the evening was associated with reduced sleep quality, reduced sleep quantity, and lower next-day work engagement. The blue light from screens is part of the problem, but the greater issue is cognitive activation: processing a work email engages the prefrontal cortex and triggers stress hormones, making it physiologically harder to fall asleep and reach deep restorative sleep stages.

Productivity Paradox

Employers who contact staff outside hours often believe they are increasing productivity. The evidence suggests the opposite. A Stanford study found that productivity per hour declines sharply after 50 hours per week, and output at 70 hours is barely different from output at 56. Workers who are always on produce less per hour, make more errors, and burn out faster. True productivity depends on recovery - and recovery requires genuine disconnection. The countries with the highest productivity per hour worked in Europe (Denmark, Norway, Germany) are also those with the strongest cultures of work-life separation.

The Holiday Effect

Annual leave only delivers its wellbeing and productivity benefits if the employee actually disconnects. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found that the psychological benefits of a holiday faded within two weeks of returning to work - but that the speed of this fade was directly related to how much the employee had worked during their time off. Employees who fully disconnected reported sustained improvements in health and wellbeing, while those who checked emails daily reported almost no benefit from the holiday at all. Emailing someone on their annual leave does not just disrupt their holiday - it can eliminate the entire restorative value of the time off.

Where Does the UK Stand?

The UK currently has no right-to-disconnect legislation. There is no law preventing an employer from emailing a staff member at midnight on a Saturday or sending a Slack message to someone on holiday in Tenerife. The Working Time Regulations 1998 establish rights to rest breaks, daily rest (11 consecutive hours between working days), and weekly rest (24 uninterrupted hours per week), but these regulations apply to actual working time - not to the expectation of availability.

The Employment Rights Bill 2024 (introduced by the Labour government) initially included discussions about a right to disconnect, but the final legislation focused on other priorities (zero-hours contracts, fire-and-rehire practices, day-one rights). A statutory code of practice on the right to disconnect was proposed but has not yet been enacted as of early 2026. This means UK employers operate in a grey area: there is no legal obligation to protect employees from out-of-hours contact, but there is growing cultural, ethical, and business-case pressure to do so.

What UK Businesses Can Learn

You do not need to wait for legislation to protect your team from always-on culture. The most forward-thinking UK employers are already implementing right-to-disconnect policies voluntarily - and finding that the benefits to recruitment, retention, productivity, and employee wellbeing more than justify the effort. Here is how to start:

1. Establish a Written Disconnection Policy

Create a clear, written policy that sets out when employees are and are not expected to be available. Define normal working hours. State explicitly that employees are not expected to respond to communications outside those hours. Address annual leave specifically: when someone is on holiday, they are on holiday - no emails, no Slack messages, no "quick questions." Put this in your employee handbook and make it part of the onboarding process.

2. Use Scheduling Tools

If you need to compose an email at 10 PM, that is fine - but schedule it to send at 9 AM. Most email clients and messaging platforms now offer send-later functionality. This allows you to work according to your own schedule without creating an obligation for the recipient. Make scheduled sending the default behaviour in your organisation, not an exception.

3. Define Emergency Protocols

Every business has genuine emergencies. The problem is not that emergencies happen - it is that "emergency" is used to justify routine out-of-hours contact. Define what constitutes a genuine emergency in your business (server down, security incident, urgent client crisis) and create a separate, dedicated channel for those situations (a phone call, a specific emergency number). If everything goes through the same Slack or email channel, there is no way to distinguish genuine urgency from casual convenience.

4. Hold Managers Accountable

A disconnection policy is only as good as manager compliance. If the CEO sends the policy email at 6 PM and then messages the team at 11 PM, the policy is meaningless. Train managers to respect boundaries. Include disconnection compliance in management reviews. If a manager routinely contacts their team outside hours, that is a performance issue - address it as such.

5. Remove "Out-of-Hours Heroes" from Your Culture

In many organisations, the person who responds to emails at midnight is praised as "dedicated" and "committed." This cultural norm punishes healthy behaviour and rewards unhealthy behaviour. Stop rewarding availability and start rewarding outcomes. The employee who delivers excellent work in their contracted hours and then disconnects completely is the one you should be holding up as a model, not the one who is always online and heading toward burnout.

6. Track Leave Properly

You cannot protect people's time off if you do not know who is off and when. A proper leave tracking system makes it visible to the entire team when someone is on leave, making it harder for colleagues to "accidentally" message them with work queries. When leave is tracked in a spreadsheet or not at all, the boundaries are invisible - and invisible boundaries get crossed.

Common Objections (And Why They Do Not Hold Up)

"But what if something urgent comes up?"

Genuine emergencies are covered by emergency protocols (see above). The vast majority of out-of-hours messages are not emergencies - they are questions that could wait until morning. If your business genuinely cannot function without being able to contact every employee at any time, you have a staffing or process problem, not a communication problem.

"Our clients expect 24/7 availability."

Then build a rota. If clients need 24/7 support, that is a legitimate business requirement - but it should be met through structured on-call arrangements with proper compensation, not by expecting every employee to be informally available at all times. On-call is a defined, compensated state. Always-on is an expectation without compensation or boundaries.

"I'm not forcing anyone to reply - they choose to."

This is the most common and most insidious objection. A manager sending an email at 9 PM is not technically forcing a response. But the power dynamic means that the employee perceives an obligation, regardless of whether one is stated. Research consistently shows that employees feel pressure to respond to out-of-hours messages from superiors even when explicitly told they do not have to. The solution is not to tell people they do not have to respond - it is to not send the message in the first place.

"We are a startup / small business - we cannot afford rigid boundaries."

Small businesses can actually implement disconnection policies more easily than large ones, because cultural change is faster with fewer people. And startups in particular should pay attention: burnout is the single biggest threat to startup teams, and the always-on culture that feels like "hustle" in year one becomes unsustainable churn in year three. Protecting your team's recovery time is not a luxury - it is how you keep them.

The Business Case in Numbers

• The CIPD's 2023 Health and Wellbeing at Work report found that 76% of UK employers reported stress-related absence in the previous year, with "always-on" culture cited as a contributing factor.
• Deloitte's 2022 Mental Health and Employers report estimated that poor mental health costs UK employers GBP 51 billion per year in absenteeism, presenteeism, and staff turnover.
• A 2021 study by the Chartered Management Institute found that 32% of UK managers felt unable to switch off from work, and that this correlated with higher rates of burnout, lower job satisfaction, and greater intention to leave.
• Companies with strong work-life balance policies report 25% lower employee turnover (Glassdoor Economic Research, 2019), and replacing an employee costs an average of 6-9 months' salary (Oxford Economics).

The maths is clear: the cost of protecting employee boundaries is trivial compared to the cost of not protecting them.

Is UK Legislation Coming?

Almost certainly, yes - the question is when, not if. The European trend is clear and accelerating. The UK Labour government has signalled interest in a statutory code of practice, and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) has been campaigning for a legal right to disconnect since 2021. Public opinion is strongly in favour: a 2023 YouGov poll found that 65% of UK adults supported a legal right to disconnect from work communications outside working hours.

For UK businesses, the smart move is to get ahead of legislation rather than scramble to comply after it arrives. Companies that implement disconnection policies now will have a competitive advantage in recruitment (especially among younger workers who prioritise work-life balance), a healthier and more productive workforce, and a smoother transition when the law eventually catches up.

The Bottom Line

The right to disconnect is not about being anti-work. It is about recognising that human beings need genuine rest to function at their best, and that the technology which has made us more connected has also made it harder than ever to stop working. The most productive workforces in Europe are not the ones that work the most hours - they are the ones that work focused hours and then truly switch off.

Whether or not the UK legislates a right to disconnect this year, next year, or in five years, the evidence is overwhelming: protecting your employees' time off is not a concession to weakness. It is an investment in the sustained performance, mental health, and loyalty of the people who make your business work. And it starts with something remarkably simple: not sending that email at 10 PM.

Further Reading

• Unlimited PTO: The Great Scam?
• UK Employment Law: Staff Leave, Sick Pay, and Holiday Rights
• Managing Leave Clashes: When Everyone Wants the Same Week Off
• Free Staff Holiday Tracker vs Spreadsheets

Disclaimer: This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Employment law is subject to change. For specific situations, consult a qualified employment lawyer or ACAS.