Future work trends: from disconnect rights to flexible norms

Can the "right to disconnect" transform your work-life balance?

In this episode of the Employment Law Pod, Andrew Whiteaker and Claire Taylor-Evans discuss the Labour government's groundbreaking proposal aimed at helping employees unplug from their jobs outside of office hours. They also explore the fascinating trend of "conscious unbossing," where a Robert Walters survey reveals Gen Z's growing preference for individual contributions over the high-stress roles of middle management.

Next, they tackle the troubling issue of faux-poductivity. Discover how employees are increasingly engaging in behaviours that give the illusion of productivity without meaningful output. Drawing insights from a Workhuman survey, they uncover the underlying causes such as burnout, disengagement, and the pressures of an always-on work culture.

Finally, we explore the impact of flexible work environments on employee motivation and engagement. The constant connectivity from mobile alerts and emails can leave employees feeling perpetually on call, negatively affecting their morale and productivity. Together, Andy and Claire discuss how proactive managerial engagement and potential legislative changes could enhance flexible working rights, making them the norm rather than the exception.

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Chapters

• 1:47 Conscious unbossing
• 9:25 The issue of faux-ductivity
• 17:21 Proposals for employment law reform
• 21:47 The right to disconnect

Transcript

Andrew Whiteaker: 0:03 

Hello and welcome to the Employment Law Pod from Boys Turner. My name is Andy Whiteaker, I'm a Partner in the employment team and today I am very happy to say that I'm joined by my colleague, Claire Taylor-Evans. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 0:15 

Hi Andy, it's great to be here. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 0:17 

And, as ever on the Employment Law Pod, we're going to be talking about trends or cases or issues that are live at the moment in employment law that we think are interesting and maybe worth having a chat about. So, Claire, what are you going to be talking about today? 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 0:32 

I'm going to be talking about the right to disconnect, Andy, which, as we know, is a proposal by the Labour government to encourage employees to switch off from the workplace and have a better work-life balance. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 0:42 

Excellent, excellent. Well, that's certainly something that we are waiting to see some legislation proposed in the next few weeks, so that's going to be something to chat about. That should be interesting, and for me, there's nothing I like more in this world than reading surveys conducted by recruitment consultants or others, where they come up with new phrases or terms to explain or to focus on particular trends in the workplace. So today I'm going to be talking about conscious unbossing and also phoductivity. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 1:13 

Wow, that sounds very impressive. You're going to have to explain that what they mean to me. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 1:17 

That's fine, we will, we will get there. And also I'm going to tie that in a little bit into again some of the Labour government's proposals. So I'm going to tie that in a little bit into again. Some of the Labour government's proposals, specifically around the right to work flexibly from day one and that being a potentially the rule rather than an exception to the rule, so that being something that everyone has an expectation of being able to do, and potentially placing the burden on the employer to explain why it can't be accommodated in a particular working environment. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 1:43 

Yeah, I think that's going to be really interesting for a lot of our clients. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 1:47 

Okay. Well then I'll grasp the nettle on this one and let's start off with conscious unbossing then. 

Okay, so I feel like it's necessary for me to explain what I'm talking about, about conscious unbossing, because I've got to admit, a couple of weeks ago I'd never heard of this concept either, and it flows out of a recent survey, or at least, I saw it for the first time in a recent survey by Robert Walters, who are talent solutions business, and what they identified in their survey was that 72% of Gen Z respondents to this survey indicated that it was their intention or their ambition to make an individual contribution to their employer rather than taking on any managerial responsibilities. And digging further into that, 52% of respondents said they simply did not want to be middle managers. That was not how they saw their career progressing at all, and 69% of those respondents said that reasons behind that were partly because they perceived being a middle manager as being high stress but bringing low reward. I can certainly appreciate the high stress thing. As far as a manager is concerned, that certainly can be the case. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 3:04 

But we have to ask ourselves, I suppose, why is it that the new generation entering the workforce are having that do have that perception of middle management and management roles and why it might seem unattractive to them. And one thing I think maybe we could look at is job insecurity. So we've seen of late there were some announcements recently around Amazon and changes to the way that they organize their business, and a lot of the headlines were focused on their decision to ask everyone to come back into the office, and it's understandable why the focus would have been primarily on that, because that's a big change and obviously the ability to work flexibly and work from home continues to be a really hot topic. But mixed in to all of that as well were some announcements around flattening the management structure and, of course, what flattening the management structure really meant was removing a big swathe of middle management and Amazon are just one of a number of organizations that have taken similar steps over the last couple of years. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 4:07 

So you can see, perhaps, that if you're an aspiring employee who's making their way in their career and you look at these middle managers and you see, well, they they appear to me to be quite disposable and they seem to work very hard. They have a lot of responsibility placed on their shoulders. They can't just get on with their job, they're responsible for the performance and achievements of others and yet I can't see they necessarily get paid an awful lot more than I do for taking on that, that burden and responsibility. And you know what is. Is that really what I want and what I prefer? To just continue to be more autonomous in what I do, be focused only on my achievements and my success, and not have that additional burden placed on us. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 4:52 

And you know the other surveys have found, for example, the 75 percent of millennial middle managers. So we're now talking about the generation up from, from Gen Z, confirming that they perceive themselves to be overwhelmed, stressed and burnt out. So again, if that's what Gen Z are looking at, if that's what they can see in the generation above them, you can understand why taking that step into management might not seem like a particularly attractive option. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 5:20 

Yeah, so why do you think that is? 

Andrew Whiteaker: 5:23 

So, in terms of the people being burnt out and stressed, well, I think we do need to think about the way in which we train and engage with our managers and the support that we provide them. Certainly, you and I see time and again individuals who've been placed in managerial roles but kind of being cut adrift and not really provided with sufficient support. Also, even though that you're a manager, there's still a desire perhaps to have some autonomy. We know that control is often a really important factor in job satisfaction and so if you're being micromanaged by your own manager and don't have the ability to structure, to influence, to run your particular team, patch, division, whatever it might be, in a way that you think best, you can see how that will will impact your well-being and impact on your job satisfaction. And also looking at workloads too, and understanding what is it that we're requiring of our, of our middle managers, and are we adequately supporting them in, in the tasks that they need to do, or are we expecting too much? And this is really important, I think, because in the same survey by Robert Waters, where identified these attitudes around a lack of desire to step up into a middle management role, they also found that 89% of employers think that middle management is actually really crucial to their organizations, so that demand to have people running these teams, running these organizations, is not going away. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 6:49 

Businesses are going to need to have people doing these jobs moving forward. So if that's the case, you need to think how you make it more attractive for people to want to do it, and perhaps another thing to look at as well is trying to flatten structures a bit. So try to remove the distinction between delegators and doers. Try to remove that sort of them and us mentality that can sometimes arrive in very hierarchical structures and again make it unattractive to move into a role of that nature and feel that you're, you know, excluded from peers, or or even that you're then answerable to other people. I think that then goes back to to autonomy too. So something I've only really sort of I've only seen put, had a name applied to it over the last few weeks, but I think it is something that we we are maybe seeing um more widely in our in our experience and our dealings with our clients. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 7:44 

So do you think employers putting in place management training and support for those managers will make Gen Z feel that that is a much more attractive role for them in the future? 

Andrew Whiteaker: 7:57 

I think so. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 7:58 

I think there maybe are some generational, attitudinal issues that arise from the different generation. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 8:03 

We know about concepts of having more of a portfolio, career side, hustles, that kind of thing, and maybe for some there's the attitude well, I'll go and do my day job and I'll do nine to five and I'll. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 8:17 

But actually I don't really want to have a high level of responsibility in that role because I want to channel my energies into the creative stuff that I do outside of my formal job. So, whether that be something creative in terms of music or art or design, or whether it's running your own small business, whether it's selling something on Vinted or whatever it is, that's where you focus your, your your main energies and you just say, well, I'll take my job and I'll do my job and it'll pay me and that's enough. But I don't really see it being attractive taking up that, that, that additional responsibility of middle management. So I think, yeah, going back to the point you made, providing that support, making sure that people are properly remunerated for what they do and making sure they feel properly rewarded and appreciated in their roles to try and make it a more attractive step for individuals to take. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 9:11 

I think that that is really important because, as you say, if it isn't attractive and employers need these roles, they need these managers in place. What are they going to do? They need to really act on this. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 9:25 

The second subject I want to talk about is faux ductivity. What do I mean by that? It's an odd word Well, it's one of my, I love portmanteaus and that this is kind of what this is. So it's faux, as in F-A-U-X, so false. And then ductivity, as in productivity. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 9:40 

So you need to think of it as being sort of the opposite perhaps of, or fake, productivity. So it's giving the appearance of productivity rather than actually doing anything productive. So that can be something as insidious as, let's say, you're working from home and you know that your Microsoft Teams will pick up if you don't waggle your mouse every five or 10 minutes or so and indicate that you're offline. So you just sit there watching Netflix and occasionally waggling your mouse to make sure that that doesn't appear that way. Or less extreme examples of it, of just filling your day with endless team meetings or zooms, calls or things like that, which don't actually progress anything. It gives that surface level impression of doing things but not actually making a positive contribution to, you know, to the success of the business or the particular work that you're you're trying to achieve so being busy for busy's sake yeah, absolutely so. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 10:39 

filling your time, perhaps? So the first example is really not filling your time, but giving the impression that you're filling your time, or, alternatively, filling your time with stuff, but that isn't actually doing something that's of value. So the question is I suppose it's a lovely word, but is it actually a real thing? Is, is this a genuine phenomenon or is this just something that's, you know, people have dreamed up and are giving a name to? Well, we do know that productivity in the UK is falling. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 11:09 

We know that we have an issue, or perhaps not falling, but we do know we have a productivity issue in the UK and that we are not as productive as we would like to be, and so it's legitimate to ask well, why might that be the case? Why is it that productivity is not as healthy as we would like? And again, we'll go to one of these surveys that was undertaken this time. It was by WorkHuman, who are a sort of HR software organisation, and in their survey it would suggest that it's not particularly widespread, in that 67% of the respondents to their surveys denied ever engaging in faux ductivity, although I suppose you might say you would say that wouldn't you. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 11:52 

Of course we would um, although I suppose you might say you would say that, wouldn't you? Who's? Who's going to admit to? Although of course it is. It is, you know, it is anonymous, no one's going to find out. So perhaps there's a, there's a, an ability for someone to to, to admit something without any recourse, or that being a problem for them. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 12:08 

And maybe the other way of looking at it is that, wow, actually there's a large proportion of people who are willing to admit to this. You know that's that's 33 percent. Of employees are saying yeah, I don't really do that much actually and I just make it look as if I'm doing things you know. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 12:23 

So you might say, well, it maybe it's not such a thing, because nearly 70 percent of people say it's not something that they do. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 12:29 

But if 30 percent of people are admitting that, yeah, they kind of do do that, then that would suggest that maybe it is an issue. And even more so, a bigger issue, I suppose, is that 48 percent of managers so that's half of the managers in the uk workforce, according to this survey at least think that it's a real thing. So they perceive it as being a problem. And again, just just breaking down those, those, those figures around individuals who admit to, you know, perhaps not working as hard as they should or engaging in this productivity really interestingly, it was 32 percent of employees admitted to engaging in, you know, work for work's sake or, you know, slacking off a bit, whereas 37% of managers admitted to doing that. So this is not necessarily an employee thing. It's not something that you know. It's managers who are being frustrated by their employees not really putting the effort in. Actually, managers are admitting that they're not really working as hard as they should be, or just giving the impression of hard work without actually engaging in hard work. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 13:38 

That's really interesting. So so what do you think that means then? 

Andrew Whiteaker: 13:41 

Well, the question is why? Why do we think this is happening, I suppose? Well, I think there could be lots of answers to it. Is it, is it a well-being issue? So is it sent essentially feeling disengaged, feeling burnt out, feeling stressed, feeling, yeah, unmotivated by the work that they're undertaking? It could be an element of laziness in it as well you know, that's. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 14:06 

That's a possibility. There could be issues around other responsibilities, so I've spoken already about people engaged in side hustles. Yeah, is it the case that people are doing other things, or whether it's things in their life so personal responsibilities and personal admin or is it that they're doing other roles or engaging in in non-work related activities when they should be working? Is it other distractions? I mentioned waggling your mouse while watching netflix, you know. Is it that for some people, maybe if they're working remotely, there are just other things going on in their life? 

Andrew Whiteaker: 14:40 

Again, not necessarily as insidious as deliberately making a decision to watch tv when you should be working, but if people are coming in and the kids come home from school and the doorbell goes and it's the gas man or whatever it is, there are things that are sort of engaging and taking our focus away from what we should be doing. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 14:58 

And also, maybe the always on culture. Maybe that plays a part in it as well. If you are a slave to your mobile phone and it's always pinging and the emails are always coming in. I know you're going to talk about the right to switch off later on, but if that's the thing and you never feel like you ever really cut a break. You know you're, you're always at the behest of your, your manager or your colleagues or clients. Even does that impact upon how engaged and motivated you feel just during the course of the day, and does that result in people just feeling well, I'm just going to get through the day, I'm just going to do what I've got to do to get through to the end, to do that bare minimum of work, rather than really engaging and trying to do more just because I'm just fed up? 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 15:43 

I'm done with this. Yeah, that's you know that is really interesting, but what do you think that means in terms of employers? What can they do about this? 

Andrew Whiteaker: 15:53 

well, certainly, the respondents of the survey suggested that actually there was a big where there was engagement from from managers. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 16:00 

So where someone felt abandoned and just left to their own devices and there was a lack of engagement, then they're more likely to be disenchanted and simply just do that bare minimum and get along, whereas if you have a manager who's properly engaged in your in your work, checks in with you, tries to understand what's going on, offers support, assistance, etc, etc. Also looks to provide other things, whether it's training or additional resources or whatever that can boost the engagement of the employee and therefore reduce the propensity for again just going through the motions and giving the impression busyness 

So just making sure that they are checking in with their employees, and I suppose that's even more important if people are working remotely or hybrid yeah, absolutely, and I think you know there is this need, still, though, to focus on output rather than input, so we don't necessarily need to be on top of people at all times and understand everything they're doing. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 16:54 

A micromanagement can actually have the the opposite effect, actually, but what we don't want to be doing is is abandoning people and just leaving them to their own devices, especially when we have a  work from home culture or a hybrid working culture that's developed in many sectors in the UK. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 17:21 

I ended the last section talking about hybrid working culture, and that brings me to my final point, and that's around proposals for employment law reform, and we know that one of the things that was spoken about at the recent Labour conference and that we know is an intention of the government is to amend the right around flexible working, because we know that originally, this started as something that was available for carer people with caring responsibility or children. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 17:44 

Then it was broadened out to everyone, although it was subject to a service requirement. That service requirement has now gone, so it is a day one right, but it is still currently a necessity for an individual to make an application to work flexibly, and then the onus is on the employer to consider that application again. We don't have any draft legislation as yet, but the suggestion is that we're looking at potential, an expectation or a default position that an individual can work flexibly, and then it being a matter for the employer to then demonstrate why this particular job can't be done flexibly or in a in a, in a flexible manner almost a reverse burden yeah, exactly, the burden is almost switched. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 18:26 

So it's not the responsibility of an individual to make an application. It's the responsibility of an employer to explain why it can't be done flexibly from the outset. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 18:34 

Um and do you think we might see because at the moment there are eight statutory prescribed grounds for for refusal which are quite wide you think we might see a restriction of those grounds going forward? 

Andrew Whiteaker: 18:47 

Well, possibly, possibly. I mean again, we anticipate getting some legislation second week of october, we think, where we'll actually see some detail around this. But I do think more broadly. I wonder whether this is a bit of 2020 legislation, and by that I mean that, if we can remember back to 2020 and all of a sudden, white collar workers or those who are based in offices were all of a sudden required to work from home. I always remember that. I always think I had to remember, when we talk about this, that it was still only at its height 48% of the uk workforce that was working from home. Because, you know, we talk about this very broadly, but for many people in the service sector in hospitality and in retail etc. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 19:29 

They can't work. It's not possible to work from home or distribution, etc. But there was this great move that, oh, this isn't this wonderful, this is brilliant hospitality and in retail etc. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 19:32 

They can't work. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 19:33 

It's not possible to work from home or distribution etc. But there was this great move that, oh, this isn't this wonderful, this is brilliant, we can all work from home now. No, this is the end of the office. No one ever needs to go back in. And for many sections of society, it was seen as a real, a godsend. Actually, I can now work flexibly, it gives me freedom, it reduces my commute, I can juggle other responsibilities, and it was seen as a real positive boon. And those things persist. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 19:58 

But at the same time, from our experience, we've seen that many sectors it works and for many sectors it's not as successful. And even within sectors, some businesses have found that a hybrid working pattern is something that really does work for them, whereas others find that it just doesn't. And they don't find that it's something that they can incorporate as successfully. The mood music of late has been towards businesses asking people to come back in more frequently, not necessarily full-time, but more frequently. So I do just do wonder and I'll leave you with this thought, I suppose is that whether it is the right thing for the government to be doing? To be mandating this right and setting up as it up as the default, regardless of the circumstances of the business, regardless of the sector that they operate in, rather than leaving it for an individual business to decide, you know, how it wants to offer employment to individuals, and then considering flexible working requests as and when they're made. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 20:59 

I think you're right, Andy. I think a one-size-fits-all approach can be dangerous. If we look at the traditional concept of a workplace with everybody being in the office 9 till 5 or 9 till 5.30 or even later, Monday to Friday, that was a one-size-fits-all and obviously we've seen the benefits of the hybrid working model. So flip into the other way isn't necessarily the right approach either, I think. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 21:18 

No. well, look, I mean, on this podcast, we often finish talking about particular sections by saying watch this space. And I'm a stickler for tradition, so I'm going to say that once again and watch this space. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks. 

Okay, so, before we disconnect for the end of this podcast, Claire, you're going to be talking now about the right to disconnect. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 21:47 

I am indeed so. The right to disconnect is a proposal by the labour government for employees to switch off from the workplace and for the Labour government to regulate that in some way, and it was first discussed in 2021 in the Labour Party's Green Paper with a promise to bring in the right to switch off, which was disconnecting from work outside of working hours and not being contacted by your employer. It was part of the Labour Party's Green Paper with a promise to bring in the right to switch off back in 2021. But it featured also heavily in the Labour Party's manifesto, which was, of course, all about getting Britain back to work and making work pay and increasing productivity. So, you might think, why would the Labour Party be encouraging employees to switch off and step away and down tools when in fact, what they want is more productivity? It appears obviously counterintuitive, doesn't it? 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 22:44 

But if you look at the statistics in a survey, I think last year by Mental Health UK, one in five workers are taking time off in the last year due to poor mental health. We've talked, Andy, previously on this podcast about flexible working, hybrid working and the blur between work and life essentially and that becomes even more prevalent, I think, in remote working environments where in the office you leave, you leave, you work at the door often, but when you're working from home you might nip out and juggle other responsibilities, but then obviously you have to then make up that time in the evening and we see frequently employees working long hours, weekends, etc 

Andy Whiteaker: 

Yeah, it's that always on culture that I was speaking about a little earlier on in the podcast. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 23:37 

Absolutely so. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 23:38 

There is, I think, very much a need to make sure that these lines are not as blurred as they currently are, and there is, I think, a need for some kind of a regulation in relation to that, because, of course, currently we have in place in the UK the working time regulations, don’t we? Which legislate the maximum amount of working time per week, which is 48 hours? But obviously employees can opt out of that legislation and senior executives often aren't regulated by that legislation because they can determine their own working hours. And of course, we know there's also legislation in place under the working time regulations for the amount of rest breaks that employees should have, so 20 minutes every six hours and then uninterrupted rest 24 hours every week. But there isn't currently anything in place that says that you can't send emails, for example, after a certain time, or you must switch off your phone if you're on annual leave, and so really, the proposal is to put in place, I think, some clear boundaries or encourage employees to think about this in the future. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 24:50 

So do we have any inkling of what the legislation or the rules might look like? Are there any precedents that we might be able to look at the way that other countries have managed this or sought to manage this situation? 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 25:02 

Well, I think we can look to our European friends, because France has had this regulation in place since 2017. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 25:11 

And that requires employers with more than 50 employees to negotiate with their employees on the right to disconnect and, if negotiations fail, to set out a Charter of Good Conduct which will set out expectations on hours and when employees are not required to answer emails, for example. The Labour Party have previously said that they are likely to follow models which are adopted currently in Ireland or Belgium. So in Ireland, the right to disconnect was introduced in 2021. And it's far more like touch than, obviously, the French model. In Ireland, there is no requirement for employers to have a right to disconnect policy, but the government does recommend that employers proactively engage with their employees to develop one, and the right to disconnect in Ireland is a right to maintain clear boundaries between work and leisure time, including a right not to work routinely outside of normal working hours, a right not to be penalized for refusing to work outside normal working hours and a duty to respect another's right to disconnect by, for example, not routinely emailing or calling the employee outside normal hours. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 26:27 

I think that flexibility is quite important, though, isn't it? Because imposing a sort of one-size-fits-all as we've also been speaking about today or mandating a certain way of doing things is not always going to work for everyone, and there's certain ills, there's certain bad things that we can see it would be good to legislate against. So that sort of haranguing, pestering people, being chased at all hours and not being able to take their rest and not being able to switch off, but at the same time, we know that people sometimes do work odd hours. If they've maybe got child care responsibilities or other responsibilities, they might take the view well, I'm going to stop doing my job right now and then I'm going to pick it up again in the evening, maybe when I've got flexibility to do that. So, by mandating a specific process that's applicable to everybody, that risks outlawing the flexibility that many people actually really benefit from. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 27:18 

I think that is important and obviously the government will consult with businesses before any regulation is brought in, and that's certainly something that they would need to take into consideration, because there's no point bringing in regulation that's seeking to prevent this mischief that they're seeking to prevent if it in fact causes more problems than it solves. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 27:41 

So we were talking about what form this new regulation might take and if it follows the model in Ireland. There is in place not specific regulation but instead a code of practice which sets out good practice that employers must take into account, as I talked about about requiring them to engage with employees to develop a policy, but there isn't any particular sanction for breach of that policy and there's certainly no requirement in Ireland for employers to put in place a right to disconnect policy. But what the Irish regulation does say is that if there are any breaches of employment rights, the fact that the employers fail to follow the code of practice on the right to disconnect will be taken into account so similar to some of the codes of practice we have in the UK at the moment around disciplinary and grievance and other matters, where you don't have to follow them. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 28:35 

But if you don't, it'll be taken into account and and under the UK legislation then there can also be implications for compensation levels that flow from it. So that could be something as well, potentially, I suppose, to keep an eye on. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 28:47 

Yeah, I think that's probable because obviously we have the ACAS code, which is taken into account with disciplinary grievances and, as you said there, the uplift that is potentially applicable to any compensation of up to 25%. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 29:01 

We might see something very similar, I would imagine, going forward and also in terms of the claim that an employee might potentially have. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 29:10 

If there is no standalone claim, which is what we expect under the right to disconnect regulation, it is possible that there could be claims, for example, constructive dismissal claims, where a manager has been giving an employee excessive work and perhaps contacting them frequently out of hours, and the fact that an employer didn't have in place, or at least hadn't even thought about, this right to disconnect could potentially be in breach of then the code of practice. You could see how then that could potentially bring into play this uplift of if that is what comes into force of up to 25 percent, and I'm actually dealing with a matter at the moment whereby a manager and a lot of businesses have this in place now, but they had a team whatsapp group, as we do, in fact indeed which we use, obviously, to share pictures of our, our pets and things that we do on the weekend, but, but in this particular case, the manager was whatsapping about work after midnight, one o'clock in the morning, and some of the employees found this to be creating a hostile and intimidating environment. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 30:23 

I think it's really important, regardless of legislation, that employers are risk assessing their businesses and looking at whether, in fact, there are any toxic workplace cultures in place. What is the policy on electronic communications? What is the policy on out-of-hours working? Do you have something in place that says you can switch off and disconnect on holiday, or are employees expected to be monitoring their email during their holidays as well? 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 30:54 

Actions I would suggest that employers take are really undertaking an audit of their workplace and their culture and their expectations, because risk assessments, as we know, are very important, not least because employers have a duty to maintain the health and safety of their employees, and that includes, obviously, their mental safety as well. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 31:14 

But we have the new regulations coming in force later this month, which is a more proactive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment, so part of that duty would be undertaking a risk assessment into areas where there is potential risk of sexual harassment. So this could be part of that wider workplace audit. So looking at, as I say, workplace culture are there any long hours cultures? Are there any areas where there is a toxic workplace culture? And also looking at managing expectations. So, for example, I often see with my clients email footers that say it suits me to send this email at this time. I work flexibly, I do not expect a response. And I think that's a really important point as well to encourage those email footers so that there isn't an expectation if somebody receives an email, for example, at 11 o'clock at night from a manager that they feel that they need to respond. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 32:15 

Excellent. Well, look, I feel like I've been saying this for several months and I only said it again 10-15 minutes ago, but we wait with bated breath to see what the draft regulations will say in the next few weeks. So, I think that brings the podcast to an end for today. Thank you, Claire, for coming along. 

Claire Taylor-Evans: 32:31 

Thanks very much, it's been great. 

Andrew Whiteaker: 32:33 

So all that remains, then, is to thank everyone for listening to the podcast and to remind you that if you're interested in checking out more episodes in this series, then please do go to the Boyes Turner website, or, alternatively, you can follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks again and goodbye, thank you.