The Right to Disconnect: Healthy Boundaries in an Always-On Workplace

It is 9:47 pm. A message from your manager lights up your phone: "Can you look at this?" You reply within four minutes. Your manager, it turns out, meant tomorrow. Multiply that by every team, every evening, and you have an always-on workplace that almost nobody actually asked for. The right to disconnect is how countries, companies and individual people are starting to fix that, and it has to work from both sides.

Those numbers come from Microsoft's Work Trend Index. And here is the twist that makes this post worth reading for both managers and employees. Across eight experiments with 4,004 people, researchers found that when a non-urgent work email arrives after hours, the person receiving it consistently thinks the sender wants a faster reply than the sender actually does (Giurge and Bohns, 2021). Much of the always-on pressure is a misunderstanding that nobody has cleared up.

What the right to disconnect actually means

The right to disconnect is the idea that employees should be able to switch off from work messages outside working hours without being penalized for it. In a growing number of places, it is written into law. A few examples (Deel's 2026 guide has the full list):

More are coming. The EU has been working on a directive, and US states are debating their own versions, such as a proposed Michigan bill that would stop employers requiring off-the-clock communication. Rules differ a lot by country and change often, so treat this as general information, not legal advice, and check what applies where you work.

Why it matters even where it isn't law

Psychologists call the urge to answer work messages quickly workplace telepressure. Research links it to exhaustion, burnout and poorer sleep, and the main path from telepressure to those outcomes is actually doing work in your own time (Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology). In plain terms: the evening reply is not free. Someone pays for it the next morning, and often it is the whole team.

For managers: are you the always-on culture?

Most managers who create an always-on team never meant to. They are just working when it suits them, and their team reads every message as a summons. Here are seven signs it might be you:

1. You regularly send work messages after 7 pm or at weekends.
2. Your team replies to those messages within minutes.
3. Lots of your requests are labeled "ASAP" or "urgent".
4. You send "quick questions" during people's focus time.
5. People on your team answer messages while on holiday.
6. Nobody on your team has ever told you they were offline.
7. You never take a full day off without checking in.

What your 10 pm message really says. You meant "I had a thought, no rush." Your team heard "my manager is working, so I should be too." The research is clear that receivers overestimate urgency. The silence of a missing "no rush" gets filled with worry.

The fix: say what you mean. The same research found the simplest fix is also the most effective: when senders state that a message is not urgent, the stress on the receiver drops. In practice:

• Use scheduled send. Write at 10 pm if that suits you, but let it arrive at 9 am.
• Label non-urgent messages. "For tomorrow, no need to reply tonight" takes five seconds.
• Define real urgency. Agree on what counts as an emergency and the single channel for it, such as a phone call.
• Model it. Take real days off, say you are offline, and do not reply at midnight. Your team copies what you do, not what you say.

If you want to go further, our manager's guide to notification norms covers team-wide rules, and the Slack burnout diagnostic helps you spot early warning signs.

For employees: it's OK to log off

If you recognize yourself in any of these, you probably need a boundary:

• You check work messages in bed, or before you are fully awake.
• You feel a jolt of guilt when you see a message you have not answered.
• Days off do not feel like days off.
• You cannot remember the last weekend you did not open a work app.

Your boundary is legitimate. The person who messaged you at 9:47 pm most likely expects much less speed than you assume. In many countries, your right to switch off is now written into law. And a rested version of you does better work than one who has been half-working all night.

How to set the boundary without drama. Three scripts you can adapt:

• To your manager: "Quick check: when you send messages in the evening, do you need a reply that night, or is the next morning fine? I want to be fully on during the day and properly recharge after."
• To your team: "Could we agree that messages after 6 pm get answered the next working day, unless someone calls? It would help all of us switch off."
• As your evening status or auto-reply: "I'm offline for the evening and will reply tomorrow from 9:00. For something truly urgent, please call me."

For the practical side of switching off, including what to mute and what to keep, see To Mute or Not to Mute.

Boundaries work best from both sides

An employee can set a perfect boundary and still feel guilty if their manager keeps messaging at night. A manager can say "no pressure" and still see instant replies if nobody believes it. The right to disconnect works when both sides say the quiet part out loud: what is urgent, what can wait, and how to reach someone when it really cannot.

Frequently asked questions

What is the right to disconnect?

It is the right of employees to switch off from work communication outside working hours without being penalized. Countries including France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Australia, and the Canadian province of Ontario, have laws on it, and more places are considering them.

Do I have to answer work messages after hours?

It depends on your contract, your role and local law. In many cases the answer is no, and research shows senders usually expect a slower reply than receivers assume. If you are unsure, ask your manager directly what they expect.

How can managers reduce after-hours pressure?

Use scheduled send, label non-urgent messages clearly, agree on one channel for real emergencies, and model disconnecting yourself by taking real time off.

Is the right to disconnect a law in the US or UK?

Not nationally at the time of writing. Some US states have proposed bills, such as Michigan in 2026, and the UK has discussed a code of practice. Check current local rules, as this area is changing quickly.

Logging off is not the opposite of commitment. It is how you keep showing up.