State Assembly Member for San Francisco, Matt Haney, has introduced a bill that would make it illegal in California for bosses and line managers to contact employees outside of working hours without a good reason.
If the bill were to pass, California would join 13 other countries, including Australia, Canada, France, and Portugal, that have implemented similar legislation.
It is by no means a done deal yet. It would need to pass a number of steps before being put before the state’s governor. Furthermore, it faces major opposition among employers and business advocates, like the California Chamber of Commerce, which is calling the bill a “blanket rule” and a “step backward for workplace flexibility.”
The Washington Post, which reported on the story last week, quoted Haney as saying: “The villain here, if there had to be one, is not the bosses but really the technology.
Everybody has a smartphone, so they’re available 24/7, and that has led a lot of people to feel they can never turn off. Our laws are not updated to reflect that reality.”
The Californian lawmaker believes that opponents have already exaggerated his bill. He clarified that it would only require companies to be open about their working hours expectations. Employers could, if they wished, elect to be available for work anytime.
A 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center found that the majority of workers will reply to work messages outside of their working hours.
No doubt, many of those replying are doing so out of fear of upsetting their managers or showing themselves to be perhaps less engaged with their work than other staff.
Thressa Pine Smith, an employee of Yuniverse, a corporate wellness program provider, showed her support for the bill: “Everyone is stressed out and works too much… We need tangible solutions to correct this.”
On the other hand, Ashley Hoffman, a labour, employment and workers’ compensation advocate at the California Chamber of Commerce, believes the bill could make out-of-office communications a legal minefield that could unfairly hamstring employers. What is more, employees may be negatively impacted, too. Hoffman said:
My concern is if employers have to keep tabs on employee schedules, employees may lose flexibility to do work when they want to.”
The bill could be signed into law as soon as September, and it would actually come into effect in January 2025.
A study by HP last year found that two-thirds of UK knowledge workers have an unhealthy relationship with work.
The report also uncovered that only one-quarter of the 15,600 respondents surveyed reported having a healthy relationship with work, with as many as 74 percent saying they would take a pay cut to be happier at work.
Anywhere, Anytime Work
The mantra of “anywhere, anytime work” that has become somewhat synonymous with post-pandemic branding in the unified communications space should not be confused with out-of-hours time off.
While working overtime isn’t a new concept, perhaps the knowledge that home setups are so efficient nowadays — you only need to look at Webex’s shift in their product focus from home to office to verify this — there is also an expectation that it would be easy for workers to quickly and easily get access back into their working operations if they need to.
Certainly, the modern working world can offer huge benefits for both employers and employees. It will be a question of maintaining a balance of freedoms on both sides of the equation.
Fortunately, both those for and against California’s new bill seem to be targeting a beneficial outcome for all but with a different perspective on what it will take to achieve it.
