Right to disconnect in Australia: what employers must do

With mobile phones in our pockets, giving us 24/7 access to emails, messaging apps, collaboration tools, and work documents, not to mention a hotline into the office, Australian workers have never been so available. 

While that’s great for employers, who can contact staff at the touch of a button, it’s less attractive to workers who find themselves fielding minor queries, catching up on work, and interrupting holidays to keep the business ticking over. 

The right to disconnect rule aims to change all that, protecting the employee’s personal time and limiting hours spent working off the clock.

The right to disconnect is covered under general protection laws within the Fair Work Act. The Fair Work Ombudsman defines the right to disconnect as employees’ “right to refuse to monitor, read, or respond to contact, or attempted contact, outside their working hours unless doing so is unreasonable.”

The rule applies regardless of how the contact is initiated, including phone calls, text, emails, instant messaging, and social media, and applies to contact not only from the employer, but also from suppliers, clients, and members of the public. 

Provisions in awards and agreements may go further than this basic entitlement. Employees who are on call or working overtime do not have the right to disconnect during their on-call or overtime hours. 

A Safe Work Australia report found that “mental health conditions contribute a small but increasing proportion of work-related injuries and illness,” with a 36.9% increase in claims between 2018 and 2022, with the most common mental health condition claim being for anxiety or stress. With boundaries between work and personal life increasingly blurred since the pandemic made remote working commonplace, it made sense to give Australian employees the right to disconnect. 

Since the introduction of the new right to disconnect laws in Australia, unpaid overtime has fallen from 5.4 to 3.6 hours per week, according to the Centre for Future Work. Whether employees are being paid for the additional hours, or are benefitting from increased time away from work, the new rule is clearly making a difference. 

The right to disconnect has applied to businesses with 15 or more employees since August 2024 and to employers with fewer than 15 employees since August 2025. It covers all national system employers.

Both full and part-time employees are covered by right to disconnect laws, as are casual employees if they’re covered by the Fair Work Act. It also doesn’t matter whether the employee is on site, remote, or hybrid – they have the same entitlement. 

The rule doesn’t mean that employers can never contact their workers outside of their normal hours, but that the contact must be reasonable. 

It isn’t true that the right to disconnect means that employees can ignore all out-of-hours contact from their employer. A response may still be required unless the contact is “unreasonable.”

The disclaimer “unless doing so is unreasonable” in the right to disconnect rule is deliberately vague, as reasonableness will vary from role to role, from business to business, and from industry to industry. 

Whether or not contact is reasonable could be influenced by: 

• The urgency of the contact.
• Whether the employee’s contract covers additional hours.
• The employee’s personal situation.
• How contact is made.
• The frequency of the contact.
• Relevant policies, awards, and enterprise agreements.

Workplaces may need to make changes to their operating practices to accommodate the right to disconnect rule, including: 

• Designing job roles with the rule in mind, outlining expectations, and what constitutes reasonable and unreasonable contact.
• Ensuring that payroll systems can record additional hours worked and the correct compensation for tasks completed outside of working hours.
• Training managers to understand the right to disconnect and ensure that performance is not negatively impacted.
• Setting new expectations with clients or suppliers who are accustomed to immediate responses.
• Establishing protocols for emergencies, and what constitutes an emergency.
• Clarifying how the rule will be implemented among employees who work flexible hours. 
• Managing cultural shifts and changing habits in workplaces used to a fast-paced, always-on culture.
• Tracking contact outside of working hours among remote workers and virtual teams. 

While some workplaces may mourn the loss of always-connected employees, there are many ways in which businesses will benefit from this new rule:

• Recruitment and retention: Workplaces perceived to have a positive work-life balance are often considered an employer of choice, making it easier for the business to attract and retain top talent. 
• Reduced absence: Employees who are free to use their personal time as they wish are less likely to experience burnout or misuse sick leave. The business then benefits from lower absence rates and the associated costs. 
• Clear expectations: When employees are clear on what they can expect, and managers are clear on what they can ask, the result is greater workplace harmony, increased employee engagement, and less ambiguity eating into productivity. This is particularly key for Gen Z workers. 
• Legal compliance: The right to disconnect laws in Australia mean that when contact is deemed unreasonable, employees can take their dispute to the Fair Work Commission. Compliance avoids loss of time, reputational impact, and the costs involved in this. 

To avoid disputes around the right to disconnect, employers should discuss expectations with employees and establish a right to disconnect policy. 

Assuming that the organisation already has standard employment contracts outlining regular working hours, availability expectations, and out-of-hours compensation in place, the right to disconnect policy should take into account the workplace, industry, and the employee’s role and seniority, as well as expectations around out-of-hours contact, related pay and conditions, and contact channels. 

Crucially, it should also define what is considered “reasonable” out-of-hours contact and put in place hard boundaries for such communications. 

Conclude the policy with an explanation of how concerns, disputes, and grievances will be handled internally, and set a policy review date. 

When the policy is in place, it isn’t enough to file it away until a dispute is raised. Cascade the information across the organisation, explaining the reason for the policy and how it will be applied within the business. Managers should be trained to understand what the organisation considers to be reasonable and unreasonable contact, and to manage queries and concerns from employees. 

Of course, in an international business, where multiple time zones, jurisdictions, and cultural norms come into play, the right to disconnect in Australia is easier said than done. But just as technology makes communication easier, so it can be used to minimise out-of-hours contact. 

• Use asynchronous contact where possible: Emails with auto-signatures stating that the reader should only reply in their own working hours, visual status indicators on messaging apps, and do-not-disturb flags on collaboration tools all allow employees to respond at an appropriate time, with no expectation of an immediate response from the sender. 
• Use automated messaging: Try out-of-office emails that say when the sender can expect a response, schedule sends so messages are sent at an appropriate time, and implement auto-responders that direct messages to an available employee.
• Use scheduling software: Configure calendars to automatically decline meetings scheduled outside normal working hours and build buffers into the end of work days to avoid meetings running into personal time. 

Disputes centre around whether refusal to connect is unreasonable. The reasonableness – or otherwise – for the contact should take into account: 

• How contact is made.
• How disruptive the contact is to the employee.
• Whether, or how much, the employee is compensated for out-of-hours work.
• The employee’s role and seniority.
• The employee’s personal situation.

If the dispute can’t be resolved within the workplace, both the employer and the employee are entitled to take it to the Fair Work Commission. The Commission can make orders and resolutions in favour of either side. 

The right to disconnect is re-establishing the boundaries that modern technology and the pandemic have blurred. By respecting employees’ personal time and ensuring that out–of-hours contact remains reasonable and proportionate, businesses remain compliant whilst improving retention, reducing absence, and driving engagement. 

At Careerminds, we provide solutions for the modern workplace. Whether you need executive and leadership coaching to implement your new right to disconnect policy, career enablement and skill development for employees, or support with redundancies, we have experts on hand ready to help.