French staff win right not to deal with emails out of office hours

EVER found yourself feverishly checking your phone for emails from the boss – even when you are not at work?

Or seen an evening out ruined because friends can’t stop looking at their mobiles for the latest demands from the office?

Well, from now on you don’t have to worry – if you live in France.

As of yesterday, French workers have been given the ‘right to disconnect’ – which means big companies will have to put in place measures to allow staff to ignore their smartphones outside normal office hours.

The new employment law, in a country not exactly famed for making employees go the extra mile, has been introduced over claims that the connected culture is causing burnout, sleepless nights and even relationship issues.

Staff can also clock up lots of unpaid overtime.

Companies with more than 50 employees will now have to negotiate with staff to agree on their rights to switch off.

Employers will have to discuss ways they can stop work intruding into the private lives of workers. If they cannot agree, the company must publish a charter that makes clear the demands to be placed on workers out of hours, as well as what their rights are.

The measure was introduced after a report in 2015 about the health impact of so-called ‘infoobesity’. Some large companies such as Volkswagen in Germany or insurer Axa in France have already taken steps to limit out-of-hours messaging.

Measures include cutting email connections in the evening and weekends or even deleting emails that are sent to employees while they are on holiday.

Despite being welcomed by trade groups the ‘right to disconnect’ is part of a much larger reform of French labour law and carries no sanction for companies that fail to act on it.

Left-leaning newspaper Libération praised the move, saying the law was needed because ‘employees are often judged on their commitment to their companies and their availability’. Unions, which robustly defend France’s 35-hour working week, have long demanded action to address out-of-hours smartphone use.

A study published by the research group Eleas in October showed that more than a third of French workers used their devices to do out-of-hours work every day.

The introduction of legislation to clarify employment rights was backed by around 60 per cent of workers in a poll. Anna Cox, a worklife balance expert at University College London, said: ‘For some people, they want to work for two hours every evening, but want to be able to switch off between 3pm and 5pm when they pick their kids up and are cooking dinner.

‘Some of the challenges that come with flexibility are managing those boundaries between work and home and being able to say “Actually I am not working now”.’