French workers enjoy first week of 'right to switch disconnect'

 

 

The end of the working week in France heralded a minor milestone for workers. It marks five days since the government enacted a law giving employees the right to switch off, the first time a country has sought to protect work-life balance in a hyper connected world.

 

It came as a relief for some in Paris’ business district at risk of digital burnout.

 

 

“Executives don’t dare admit to being fed up with presenteeism and of being reachable all the time. Why? Because acknowledging that you can’t keep track in our world today is shooting youtself in the foot, professionally speaking,” explained Communication expert Caroline Sauvajol-Rialland.

 

France’s postal service was one of the first firms to recognise the benefits of logging off when clocking out, allowing workers the right not to reply to emails.

 

“I know colleagues who were under much more pressure,” said Didier Chabanne, a Financial Officer at La Poste. “The fact that it is now on paper, they have tools to say ‘no’, ‘now I can’t answer’, (…) knowing that everyone gains from this (…) because for the company, if people can say stop they can recover and be way more productive.”

 

Moving from an ‘always-on’ to a ‘switched-off’ culture may be easier said than done, as the technology to keep workers connected is always in the palms of their hands.

 

 

-- © Copyright Euronews 2017-01-07

Gee I didn't have this luxury in my last 20 years, or so, of my working. Doing FIFO and still getting 20+ calls a day on my break. Good idea from the French.

good one  

Intelligent move.

My bet is that people will use their new down time to catch up on and send new emails that will be sitting in the in box when you arrive at the office in the morning.  The intent is good just not sure it will work as intended.

I think a good way of policing this would be any email or sms sent outside working hours by a company to an employee, if answered 'out of working hours' would trigger an automatic payment to the phone account of 1 hrs wage/salary. Companies would stop doing it very quickly. Yes there are potential problems, which can all be solved but you get the idea.