From today, workers around Australia will have the right to disconnect from their work outside of office hours.

The right to disconnect bill will allow employees of businesses with more than 15 workers to refuse contact from their employers, setting boundaries regarding workload.

Completing unpaid hours of work is an expectation of many jobs nationwide. However, these laws mean that requests to monitor, respond to emails or answer phone calls after hours can now be refused unless deemed unreasonable. This means that employers need to consider the necessity of work and the impact on the lives of employees when contacting them after hours.

Brent Ferguson, head of national workplace relations policy for AI Group, told the ABC, it is important to know that these laws don’t mean an end to all after hours work.

“This isn’t a prohibition on an employer contacting or attempting to contact an employee,” he said.

The legislation outlines that one exemption to these laws is if contact is legally required. It states that any disputes need to be dealt with at the workplace level first before going to the Fair Work Commission. Ferguson says this is the biggest hurdle to overcome.

“Now, what’s reasonable or unreasonable is going to depend on the individual circumstances,” he said.

“And that uncertainty is part of the difficulty that industry is really grappling with at the moment.”

Employees of small businesses will have to wait until August of next year until these laws come into effect for them.

Empty office by Avital Pinnick is available HERE and is used under a Creative Commons License. This image has not been modified.