Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Telework and the ‘right to disconnect’

Oscar Vargas Llave and Tina Weber 8th December 2020

Pressure is growing within the European Parliament for an EU directive.

right to disconnect,telework
Oscar Vargas Llave

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way we live and work in unprecedented ways. According to the second Eurofound ‘Living, Working and Covid-19’ survey, in July 34 per cent of respondents were solely working from home.

Telework can offer greater flexibility and autonomy in work organisation, enhancing efficiency and productivity. It can contribute to a better balance between work, family life and leisure time and cut commuting.

right to disconnect,teleworking
Tina Weber

But telework can also blur the boundaries between work and private life, by making workers reachable by phone, e-mail or instant messages outside of normal working hours. This ‘always on’ culture may be aggravated by organisational cultures characterised by heavy workloads and overtime, resulting in long working hours. Moreover, remote working may bring monitoring systems which invade privacy and liberty.

Working from home during the pandemic has led many to extend their working days late into the evening, and to the weekend. Eurofound research has shown that intensive teleworking, a work-life balance conflict, longer working hours and insufficient rest were quite common among employees working remotely and flexibly with information and communication technologies (ICT).


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

Workers in such arrangements are also more likely to report suffering from health-related problems, such as work-related stress and sleep disorders. So can ICT-enabled flexible work be better framed, to improve the protection of workers, while maintaining the benefits of flexibility for individuals and companies?

Legislation

This is the background to the debate around the ‘right to disconnect’. Yet to be formally conceptualised, it can be described as the right of workers to switch off their devices after work—without facing consequences for not replying to e-mails, calls or messages.

Only France, Belgium, Italy and Spain have legislated for a right to disconnect. They do not prescribe how it should be operationalised and rely on social dialogue, at sectoral and company level, to determine the modalities of implementation. And there are differences in the scope of legislation and the existence of a fall-back option (such as a charter elaborated by employers), should negotiations fail to reach an agreement. In the Netherlands and Portugal, legislative proposals have been made but the process is stalling.

In eight countries (Germany, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Malta, Sweden and Slovenia), a more or less intensive debate is taking place on the right to disconnect, with discussions being most advanced in Germany, Malta and Ireland; in some the debate has re-emerged in the context of the pandemic.

In the remaining 13 member states of the European Union there is no debate on legislation. Existing legislation is perceived to be sufficient, ICT-based flexible work is not widespread—as in most east-European countries—or collective bargaining is preferred when it comes to improving work-life balance, as in Scandinavian countries.

Right to disconnect and national legislation in the 27 member states

Picture 1
Source: contributions by the Network of Eurofound Correspondents and European Commission

Hard and soft measures

The right to disconnect is being operationalised through a variety of hard and soft measures, determined primarily via company-level agreements. Hard disconnection tends to entail connectivity shutdowns after a pre-defined hour or the blocking of incoming messages—akin to a ‘right to be disconnected’. Softer measures include pop-up messages reminding workers (and/or clients) that there is no requirement to reply to emails out of hours. The latter are often accompanied by training on the importance of achieving a good work-life balance.

While different approaches provide the flexibility to tailor solutions to the company, the implications and impact also differ. A ‘right to be disconnected’ can be more effective and it places the onus on the employer, but it may limit flexibility for both employers and workers. A ‘softer’ approach, based on the ‘right to disconnect’, however requires employees to make a decision—which they may be reluctant to do if perceived as betraying lack of ambition, with potentially negative career implications.

While evaluations of the impact of right-to-disconnect legislation on work-life balance and health and safety are not to hand, there is evidence of a boost to collective bargaining, resulting in more agreements at sectoral and company levels. Notwithstanding the national differences, there is a relatively broad consensus among social partners that the modalities of connection and disconnection, as well as the organisation of working time in remote working, have to be determined and agreed, at least, through social dialogue at company (or/and sectoral) level, to ensure they are adapted to specific needs. It is however recognised that in member states with low unionisation and attenuated collective bargaining such an approach could entail an unequal playing-field.


Support Progressive Ideas: Become a Social Europe Member!


Support independent publishing and progressive ideas by becoming a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month. You can help us create more high-quality articles, podcasts and videos that challenge conventional thinking and foster a more informed and democratic society. Join us in our mission - your support makes all the difference!

Become a Social Europe Member

EU directive

In a resolution adopted on December 1st, the Employment Committee of the European Parliament said member states had to ensure that workers were able to exercise the right to disconnect effectively, including by means of collective agreements. Adding that this was vital to protect workers’ health, the committee called on the European Commission to propose a directive enshrining the right. This non-legislative resolution is expected to be voted on in a plenary session in January 2021. Once endorsed by the parliament, it would be advanced to the commission and member states for implementation as part of future regulatory decisions.

Given that the pandemic has sparked a new debate in many countries about extending flexible working (including teleworking) to more workers, it is likely that discussions on the right to disconnect will also become more pressing as the ‘new normal’ of working life unfolds. Although some relevant legislation is in place at European and national level, data gathered by Eurofound show that the issues linked to constant connectivity persist.

Even in the absence of any evaluation, what is clear is that in countries with legislation on the issue, the number of collective agreements reached and actions taken at company level have increased. This demonstrates not only the important role of social partners but also that legislation can provide an impetus for the issue to be tackled, while still open to adaptation to specific requirements at company level.

This is part of a series on the Transformation of Work supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

Oscar Vargas Llave and Tina Weber

Oscar Vargas Llave is a research officer in the working life unit of Eurofound. Tina Weber is research manager at Eurofound.

You are here: Home / Economy / Telework and the ‘right to disconnect’

Most Popular Posts

Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
dissent,social critique,identity,politics,gender Delegitimising social critique and dissent on the leftEszter Kováts
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto
Credit Suisse,CS,UBS,regulation The failure of Credit Suisse—not just a one-offPeter Bofinger
Europe,transition,climate For a just and democratic climate transitionJulia Cagé, Lucas Chancel, Anne-Laure Delatte and 8 more

Most Recent Posts

work,labour market,pandemic,hours,Gen Z How much work is enough?Anne-Marie Slaughter and Autumn McDonald
poverty,Porto,Social Forum When life gives you lemons, make anti-poverty strategiesEstrella Durá Ferrandis and Alba Huertas Ruiz
LGBT+ rigthts,same-sex couples,civil unions,ECHR Landmark European ruling on LGBT+ rightsNausica Palazzo
boredom,work Rust out: boredom at work can be harmfulValerie van Mulukom
Kılıçdaroğlu,Turkey,Erdoğan Turkey: does Kılıçdaroğlu have a path to victory?Halil Karaveli

Other Social Europe Publications

Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

New Europe-wide survey on living and working conditions

Eurofound, in partnership with the European Training Foundation, has launched a new online survey to document living and working conditions in Europe and the evolving concerns of citizens, amid the cost-of-living crisis, the war in Ukraine and the broader post-Covid-19 context.

The survey is available in 33 languages and is open to everyone over the age of 16. It asks specific questions on perceptions of quality of life and quality of society, as well as working situation, housing and finances.

Add your voice and contribute to the research.


COMPLETE THE SURVEY HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The spring issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to Feminist Foreign Policy, to try to gauge its potential but also the risk that it could be perceived as another attempt by the west to impose its vision on the global south.

In this issue, we also look at the human cost of the war in Ukraine, analyse the increasing connection between the centre right and the far right, and explore the difficulties, particularly for women, of finding a good work-life balance and living good working lives.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube