Smart Working and the Right to Disconnect

Continuous connectivity to the internet pervades every area of ​​current reality and, consequently, of people’s private and working lives. The most obvious advantages undoubtedly concern economic operators, from the speeding up of production processes to the opportunities for savings and cost reduction. But what are the effects on the lives of workers if, under a regime of constant connection, it is no longer possible to implement the necessary distinction between work and everyday life?

Within this context, there is the exponential development of the use of smart working, or agile working, through which the employee, thanks to the use of connectivity technologies, can carry out his duties remotely, in spaces other than the company headquarters, including his own home. This work organization method is based on the ideal of granting the worker, invested with greater responsibility, flexibility and autonomy in choosing the spaces, times and tools to be used in the workplace. A «high» vision devoted to progress and the humanization of work which, by definition, requires time and adaptation to the socio-productive context.

In contrast to all these benefits, however, employees and managers risk seeing themselves trapped in a «loop» of continuous communication, making the separation between work and private life difficult. Fortunately, there are regulatory contexts which, especially in this new context of smart working, protect workers by encouraging and guaranteeing their disconnection.

The right to disconnect is a norm which acts on a double track: it gives employees the freedom to no longer be available outside working hours; it takes away the possibility for managers to be able to compromise their position due to unavailability. This right was created to protect the worker, establishing clear boundaries between private and professional life. Cutting communications, be they emails, calls, or messages, beyond working hours allows employees to find the right balance between productivity and rest. The right to disconnect therefore means the possibility of legally guaranteeing smart work workers, or agile workers, to make themselves unavailable at certain time slots.

It is increasingly important to include it in contracts, especially since the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent development of smart-working. Agile or remote working, particularly when carried out from home, has changed the organization of work, often canceling out concepts of place and time.
The extension of working hours, however, is not positive for employee performance, and this is why it must be regularized through law.

In addition to constituting an important right to protect the worker’s free time, the right to disconnect for smart working employees is in fact of fundamental importance to prevent the onset of work-related problems or disorders. The decrease or, in some cases, the total lack of separation between work and private life entails very serious risks for the psychological health of workers. The main damages caused can be:

• Technostress: that is, the stress resulting from incorrect use of new technologies at work, which leads to overloading information flows, generating anxiety, insomnia and headaches;
• Burnout syndrome: that is, serious mental and emotional wear and tear resulting from work stress which can lead to dissociative disorders, aggression and various physical problems.

In addition to the pathological risks of failure to disconnect, excessive information overload and the constant need to maintain high attention can result in a drastic decrease in individual productivity. When evaluating staff performance, it is important to keep physical tiredness and demotivation in mind. These elements, in fact, can lead the «hyper-connected» worker to be incredibly less efficient than a more moderate worker.

Even theInternational Technology NetworkWork and Family (INTWAF), an international research network, has addressed one of the most relevant and widespread problems of modern life in an interdisciplinary way: learning to manage digital devices more consciously, in particular in relation to the relationship between life time and work time.
Several studies have highlighted how the perception of autonomy and ubiquity guaranteed by digital devices is just an illusion. In fact, many talk about the ‘connectivity trap’, which has clear consequences on stress levels and individual health, as well as negative repercussions at an organizational level. For this reason, the discussion on a «right to disconnect» is now widespread, which guarantees workers the possibility of abstaining from work-related electronic communications during non-working hours.