The Right to Disconnect: Your Culture Test Arrives in 2025
If your team still treats “urgent” as a default subject line, Australia’s new right to disconnect is about to expose the cracks in your culture. This reform isn’t a gimmick—it’s a practical boundary that forces managers to plan, prioritise, and respect recovery time. It also happens to be the fastest way to see who leads well and who simply forwards emails at 10:47pm.
What’s changed—precisely
Employees now have a workplace right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact outside their working hours—unless refusal would be unreasonable. The right commenced on 26 August 2024 for most employers; small businesses have until 26 August 2025.
What “unreasonable” looks like in real life
“Unreasonable” is contextual—think genuine emergencies, critical continuity, the person’s role, whether they’re compensated for availability, and how often the contact occurs. Expect contested interpretations early on. The Fair Work Commission (FWC) has published practical guidance; every leader in your business should read it.
Why this is bigger than compliance
Healthy boundaries sharpen focus during work hours. When people trust that their evenings are not a second shift, they stop “hovering” over inboxes and start delivering in sprints. It’s not just kinder; it’s commercial.
The hidden risks if you do nothing
Grievances and disputes—employees can seek FWC orders where patterns of out-of-hours contact persist.
Productivity drag—constant low-level interruptions decay attention and quality.
Manager credibility—leaders who confuse urgency with poor planning will be on display.
The 30-day action plan
Policy tune-up: Publish a clear, plain-English Right to Disconnect standard (no legalese).
Operating rhythms:
Meeting-light mornings; decision windows for approvals.
“Delay send” defaults after 6:00pm.
Role design: Identify roles with legitimate on-call elements. If responsiveness is needed, compensate or roster it—and document the business rationale.
Manager scripts: Teach leaders to say, “I’ll schedule this for 8:30am. If it’s genuinely time-critical, call me.”
Dispute path: Give employees a simple internal escalation step before anything escalates externally.
What we’re telling clients
Implement the right to disconnect alongside workload design. Otherwise, you’ll just push the same volume into a smaller window and frustrate everyone.
If your inbox culture needs a reset, our On-Call Advisory Retainer gives your managers real-time coaching and pragmatic templates to get this right—without killing agility.
