Preparing for the Right to Disconnect
In case you missed it, significant changes are headed your way! New Commonwealth laws now introduce the “Right to Disconnect” for employees, and by August 26, 2025, every business, regardless of size, will need to comply.
As an Employer, this means no more expectations for your team to respond to texts, emails, or calls outside of their paid hours—unless they’re senior employees or explicitly compensated for their availability. This is an important opportunity to review employment agreements and workplace policies.
Watch my latest video as I explore what these new laws mean for Employers, share key takeaways, and discuss steps to ensure compliance.
Got questions? Just shoot me or the team an email.
And if you know anyone—a friend, client, or fellow landlord—who could use this information, feel free to share!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ross Millen:
In case you blinked and missed it, this week some new laws came in, some new Commonwealth laws, and they enshrined for employees the right to disconnect. So this is in a few other countries and now it's Australian law. Now, for the first year, it only applies to companies that have 15 or more employees. So if you are a really small business, you don't have to worry, but it's coming in in a year's time. 26th of August 2025 it's going to apply to all workplaces.
Now, what does it mean? Well, basically you cannot send employees text messages and emails and phone calls expecting them to respond when it's outside their paid work hours. Now, there is a reasonableness test. So if you've got a senior manager, a senior employee, naturally they tend to respond more than someone who's in a minor or junior position or a part-time or a casual position. Also, it depends whether you are paying someone, and perhaps this is a chance to look at your employment agreements, if you're paying someone extra in order to be available after hours. Or you may develop a policy about your right to disconnect and have all of your employees sign that.
So here are some key takeaways. So the laws come in for businesses that aren't micro businesses and it applies straight away. What you have to do is you have to make sure that who are your senior employees, change their employment agreements to make sure that they acknowledge that they are able to be connected after hours, and also, what's the reasonable, what's the important thing? So if you had an IT person, anything to do with your IT system, if it went down, naturally they'd have to be able to be contacted after hours. So take this opportunity to look at your employment agreements, look at your policies and other workplace policies, and if you've got any questions, contact me or anyone else at the Millens team. We are here to help. Thanks.
