For many professionals, the ping of a work email after hours is a persistent reminder that the workday rarely ends on time. As the lines between professional and personal time continue to blur, people check messages before bed and respond to requests on weekends, rarely disconnecting from work.
“We’re not wired to be working 24/7; we need downtime,” says Samantha Madhosingh, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist and leadership consultant. “Our mental health requires us to be able to disconnect, to engage with other people besides… working.”
This constant connectivity takes a measurable toll on mental health. As burnout rates climb in the U.S., many look to international policies for solutions. Other countries like France, Belgium, Argentina and Australia have enacted “right to disconnect” laws that seek to shield workers from being expected to answer after-hours communication.
This raises an important question: Could similar protections help America’s increasingly tired workforce? I talked to some experts about the right to disconnect and the realities that should be considered in corporate America.
Global implementation of ‘right to disconnect’ laws
The right to disconnect isn’t a new concept. France led the way on this initiative in 2017 with the El Khomri law, which said that any company with more than 50 employees had to set up clear procedures for digital communication during non-working hours. The results were promising enough that other nations quickly followed suit.
“Essentially, our brains need to take breaks to process the inputs that we receive every day. And when we do not get a break, our brains cannot rest and process the amount of stress that we undergo with consistent working,” says Angela Williams, a licensed clinical social worker.
The movement expanded globally: Portugal’s legislation prohibited employers from contacting employees after hours with penalties for noncompliance; Ireland approved a Code of Practice protecting employees from after-hours communications; Australia allowed employees to refuse unreasonable contact outside working hours; and Ontario, Canada, was the first Canadian province to require businesses with 25 or more employees to adopt formal disconnect policies.
Even as Europe adds legal measures that help employees distance themselves from work, American workers are burning out. The 2023 Work in America Survey reports that 77% of workers experienced high work-related stress in the last month, and 57% showed symptoms associated with workplace burnout. A 2023 Pew Research Center report said 55% of workers surveyed responded to work emails after hours.
“[My] clients will often report feeling exhaustion, feeling more irritable than normal, having trouble concentrating on tasks at work and at home… they often report medical symptoms, such as chest pains, headaches, more illness,” says Williams.
The financial consequences are equally concerning. A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine estimates that employee burnout costs companies roughly between $4,000 to $21,000 per employee annually, based on productivity losses. For a company with 1,000 employees, this translates to an average loss of about $5 million each year.
The pandemic further complicated matters. “It was all at once, all of a sudden, and that kind of change usually triggers and retriggers… trauma reactions, and it doesn’t help in being able to cope,” says Samantha Woo, licensed clinical social worker and therapist. The shift to remote work blurred personal and professional life boundaries, exacerbating stress. “A lot of my clients were having to scramble—especially upper middle management… trying to navigate a lot of restructuring and change management,” she adds.
The ‘right to disconnect’ movement in the U.S.
California was the first U.S. state to initiate legislative action, with a proposed bill in 2024 to give employees the right to not answer communication from employers outside of working hours without penalty, except in cases of emergency. While some businesses opposed it, public opinion favored the proposal, with 90.4% of American workers supporting a right to disconnect law.
Employers’ organizations, including the California Chamber of Commerce and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), strongly opposed the legislation, explaining several issues. They claimed that the bill’s ”one size fits all” policy would harm businesses and workers and make California less competitive. Critics also raised concerns about the clarity of what constituted an “emergency” and about compliance for companies with international presence or employees working in different time zones. Employment attorneys highlighted that salaried employees are usually more fluid with respect to work hours. The bill stalled in committee, highlighting the challenges of implementing such policies at a legislative level in the U.S.
Although some think that “social justice-oriented states” may embrace such statutes if there is enough pressure, enforcing a nationwide law would be difficult and necessitate a change in people’s attitude. Instead, workplace analysts argue that the right to disconnect concept is most likely to gain traction at the organizational level first and may be followed by appropriate regulations at the state level.
Strategies for embracing the right to disconnect
Some organizations in the U.S. have right to disconnect policies. Here are some strategies for companies looking to implement effective policies of their own:
- Establish clear communication guidelines about when employees can be contacted
- Focus on results rather than hours worked
- Provide resources to help employees manage stress and work-life balance
- Encourage leadership to model disconnecting
- Use technology to manage communication timing
- Customize policies to fit team needs
- Regularly review and adjust policies for effectiveness
“You want to be explicit with… ‘We’re not working past this time,’ or, ‘I don’t expect you to be working past this time.’ You can set things up in your email to send them out at 8 [a.m.]… it doesn’t have to go out at 11 [p.m.],” says Madhosingh.
The right to disconnect movement represents a clear shift in what we owe employers in a digital age. While U.S. companies may not face legal requirements, those taking proactive steps already see benefits.
The issue for American workers and companies is not whether we need the right to disconnect but how to establish healthy boundaries in a hyperconnected world.
Photo courtesy of CrizzyStudio/Shutterstock
