Right to Disconnect from Work

The epidemic has brought changes to everyone's life, one of which is the transformation of work patterns, with more and more people starting to work remotely. This was originally a temporary adjustment made in response to quarantine requirements at the beginning of the epidemic, but it has developed into a new model that many people are accustomed to (such as me). Even though the epidemic is no longer the biggest concern of everyone in North America, and many people have completely returned to their original living conditions, but for employees who have adapted to WORK FROM HOME, asking everyone to go back to the office full-time is like depriving them of one. This is an important employee benefit. Anyway, the unemployment rate is so low now. Most of the situation in the market is that the company cannot recruit people. If I were forced to go back to the office completely, I think I would resign (according to the survey, more than one-third of people in North America do this). think).

The company agrees that the hybrid working model is of course good (most of the time working from home remotely and only occasionally going back to meetings), but it also brings new problems: because the work can be accessed at any time, the working laptop is at hand, and it seems that there is no need to go to the company to check in. It is also difficult to define the time of overtime, as long as there is a need to check the email from morning to night, receive Teams Msg and even receive Teams Call (last day last day at 10 o'clock in the evening, I received a call from the CFO and Sales Manager to ask whether the contract was issued or not) nightmare). So now the new issue that everyone is discussing is: as employees, do we have the right to disconnect from work outside working hours, that is, Right to Disconnect from Work.

Ontario recently passed and began to implement new regulations, requiring all businesses with more than 25 employees to have a written disconnecting-from-work policy, the company's relevant policies must be issued to all employees, and all employees must be notified if there are any changes. . I just received our company's disconnecting-from-work policy from HR yesterday, and I took some time to read it from beginning to end. It states "An employee's time outside working hours is meant for employees to recharge and spend time as they wish. ”, unless it is really an emergency, you should not be required to attend meetings or reply to work-related information emails, etc. outside the regular working hours. As a manager, you should also establish a reasonable task deadline and avoid regular working hours. Contact employees outside of work (including after-get off work vacations, etc.), if employees feel that the mental health issue is because they cannot be separated from work for a long time, they can respond to the manager or HR, etc.

In fact, this policy is not only the rights of employees, but also requires us to pay attention to respecting the Disconnect from Work rights of others. Because it is a remote home office, everyone's working hours are very flexible, some people may work efficiently at night, and some people may like to deal with documents quietly on weekends (especially those who do not do customer service, in fact, many do not follow the 9-to-5 schedule ), that's fine, but messaging people during these hours is a problem, after all most people don't reply to a Teams Msg at 9pm (I usually turn off all notifications after log off unless I know that day Some special cases need to be expected). Another point that often makes me feel pain is the number of emails I receive every day. The cc function is really a love-hate feature. Although it can copy a bunch of people in the same email at the same time, sometimes I don’t need to reply. There is absolutely no need to know what this email involves, but it is copied in it, and the email has been back and forth countless times, and no sender will remember to remove unrelated people from this cc list, so I often see an email in it After hanging up a lot of people, I don't know how many really need to be copied. If it’s normal, it’s fine. It’s scary to check your mailbox on the first day back from a long vacation. A colleague at a meeting two days ago said that she saw more than 200 unread emails in the morning when she came back from vacation. Solved, in fact, it is estimated that many of them are just because the sender copied her for various reasons, but still have to read them one by one OMG.

Having said so much, in fact, Ontario's new regulations currently do not make detailed provisions on what must be included in the disconnecting-from-work policy of enterprises. It should be further improved in the future, and it is difficult to use a package according to different working environments in different industries. Regulations are required for all businesses, but it is always good to take the first step. As far as I am concerned, I enjoy the flexibility and convenience of working from home. At the end of the season and the end of the year, because I have to close a lot of deals, I occasionally have to deal with contracts outside the working hours. What a big trouble. I have been in Canada since I started working, so I have never experienced the 996 model in China, but my parents said that we, who have paid vacation and paid sick leave every year, and rarely work overtime, should be very content. In fact, the North American side Compared with Europe, we still often feel that there are not enough holidays haha. Of course, the overtime culture in North America is actually quite common in some industries, especially if you reach a certain level, I sometimes see the Director hanging up on the weekend for online meetings, or the CFO obviously has to sign a contract and return emails during a long vacation. , so I can only do contract review and never reach the level of signing a contract. Of course, I am currently working towards independent contract negotiation XD.