Is Your Boss Breaking The Law By Texting You After Work? – Grazia

Weve all been there before, bearing the brunt of a lack of boundaries at work. Youll clock out of a long shift, drive home via the drive-through for a good takeaway and assemble yourself in a nest of blankets. Finally, relaxation. Only to be interrupted by your phone buzzing on the table. Its your boss texting. How did the shift go? Did you put an order in for more stock before you left? Can you do this random task for me tomorrow that I definitely didnt need to message you about right now?

Suddenly, youre mentally back at work. And eventually, you notice that youre pretty much always there. Clocking off doesnt mean our brains switch off from the responsibilities of our workplace. Its easy to leave the building, but its difficult to stop thinking about work, whether its something we left half-done today, or what the workload will look like tomorrow.

And bosses texting you in the evenings and on your days off only reinforces that inability to properly escape.

It seems the pandemic only smudged the already blurred lines between work and home even more. The Office for National Statistics says during the first UK lockdown, 46.6% of people who were still employed (unfortunately, not everyone was so lucky) transitioned to remote working. Of those people, 86% did so as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, leaving only 14% with prior, regular work-from-home experience.

Ive worked from home for the best part of four years, going from a full-time remote position to becoming a sole trader. I know the golden rules, the dos and the donts that make work from home life successful. But for those who had little more than a week to transition from full-time office boss to remotely trying to manage workers, a lot of guesswork (and serious trial and error) was involved. The pandemic took away the inherent control of having your employees work under your literal supervision. The result: everyone struggling with defining boundaries with their bosses.

Well, Portugal is the first country to put a stop to this serious lack of work-to-life balance, and the boundaries employers are so often missing.

Now, the government in Portugal has passed a law preventing too much communication between bosses and employees. The new regulation bans employers from texting employees after they sign off from work. If a boss does contact employees outside work hours, they could face a financial penalty, from a hefty fine to increased gas and electricity bills, according to Portugal's Socialist Party government.

Speaking at a tech conference in Lisbon last week, Ana Mendes, Portugals Minister of Labour and Social Security, said The pandemic has accelerated the need to regulate what needs to be regulated. The Portuguese government wants to encourage more remote teleworkers and theyve recognised the boundaries that employers of these jobs often lack.

Telework can be a 'game changer' if we profit from the advantages and reduce the disadvantages. We consider Portugal one of the best places in the world for these digital nomads and remote workers to choose to live in, we want to attract them to Portugal.

Not all of their proposals were passed through parliament, though. Campaigners had originally proposed a right to disconnect, meaning workers would be able to switch off their work devices when necessary. This particular rule was not approved.

But despite that shortfall, Portugal has done a great job of starting off regulations that allow employees important freedom. Additional rules are also set to be introduced. One is planned to offset loneliness, making face-to-face meetings mandatory every few months. Another assists workers who are the parents of young children. All workers will have the right to work from home without arranging it with their employer in advance if their kids are up to eight years old.

The conversation around placing boundaries at work has been popular for a few years now but was certainly reignited by the pandemic. With 77% of people surveyed in one report expressing dissatisfaction with their work-life balance and experiencing burnout, this is unsurprising. A quick scroll through LinkedIn or even Instagram reveals an abundance of posts recommending routines and methods for conjuring and maintaining a great work-life balance. But bosses can basically do whatever they like in regards to when employees start work, how they work, and when they leave.

With Zoom fatigue and workaholic becoming buzzwords and the great resignation (one in four workers quit their jobs this year) signifying basically everyone being sick and tired of their jobs, its clear the British population are more than a little burned out.

Unfortunately, not everyone who desires a work-life balance or time away from their bosss clutches necessarily has the autonomy to make it happen, so is it time the government stepped in to make it possible for everyone? Perhaps we should impose similar regulations in the UK.

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Is Your Boss Breaking The Law By Texting You After Work? - Grazia