In Australia, workers cannot be punished for switching off work phones after hours. Photo: 123RF
Anyone notice a gust of breeze from the west on Monday night?
It could have been millions of Australians sighing with relief as they turned their work phones off when they arrived home for the evening.
Across the Tasman, new "right to disconnect" laws took effect this week, which meant that employers could not punish workers who do not pick up their phones outside normal working hours.
Workers had a right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, from their employer unless refusing was unreasonable.
People who earned over a high-income threshold would not be included and the rules would not take effect for small businesses until next year.
Other countries such as France, Ireland and Canada already had similar laws.
New Zealand did not - but employment law experts said there were other protections for workers.
Duncan Cotterill partner Alastair Espie said employees could still seek to set clear boundaries and were not required to be available or contactable outside their contracted hours, unless their employment agreement included an availability provision that required them to remain available for more work.
"In order for such availability requirements to be lawful and enforceable, they must be recorded in writing in the employment agreement, the employee needs to be paid compensation for their availability - although this can be included as part of a salary for a salaried employee - and the employee needs to have some minimum guaranteed hours of work.
"There also need to be genuine reasons for the inclusion of such arrangements, including, for example, an availability requirement actually being necessary to meet business demands."
Espie said the availability laws in New Zealand were introduced about a decade ago in response to concerns about zero-hour contracts, in which there was no guarantee of any number of hours being offered but employees were required to be available to accept work.
"However, they have a much broader application and also apply to situations where employers seek to compel employees to complete overtime or to keep themselves available for the possibility of further work."
Hesketh Henry partner Alison Maelzer said those same rules also limited availability provisions by requiring compensation for them.
A matter of health and safety
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 also gave some protection in that employers must ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of employees, including by providing and maintaining safe systems of work, she said.
"Given that 'health' includes both physical and mental health, and that 'hazards' expressly include behaviour resulting from physical or mental fatigue, it is clear that employers are required to consider the effects that working long hours, and/or outside of 'normal working hours', would have on employees' health and safety.
"Employees who have agreed on hours of work cannot be required to work outside of those hours - unless their agreement provides for it.
"Employees should carefully check the relevant clauses to establish whether they can be requested to work additional hours or whether they can be required to work additional hours - and in those cases, they should check that the availability provisions in the Employment Agreement meet the requirements of the Act. "
She said people who did not have the provision that allowed them to be requested to work more hours could then say no.
"In many industries it is becoming more common for employees to manage the expectations of colleagues and clients or customers by using auto replies, or a standard footer on email to outline their specific working hours/times."