On Monday, workers throughout Australia can refuse to respond, read or monitor work messages from their boss. The right to disconnect looks to have most workplaces with more robust and frank conversations at the workplace, with Fair Work Ombudsman and a booth saying that any dispute should be first discussed and sought to be resolved at the workplace level. But how will this be enforced? Jhames Montemayor has this report.

There is nothing more exciting about starting a new job, but 24 year old Sydney resident Stephanie’s optimism to start a new gig and advertising soon dissipated. “Yeah, it’s very competitive, I would say. And it’s just like, you can’t help but compare yourself. Obviously, when you’re working in big group, and, like, there’s multiple people that are on the same role, and you do the same jobs just for different brands. I work from home, and it will usually be a Friday, and I just if there’s, like, a lot to do and that I don’t want my Mondays to be so packed, I would work more. I would work overtime until the night and just like not start my weekends early, just just so I could get my Mondays right.”

Stephanie’s situation of overwork is not uncommon. The Australian Council of Trade Unions, Michelle O’Neill said the average person does five to six hours of unpaid work every week. So in an effort to combat rampant burnout, the government enacted the right to disconnect effective this Monday, the addition to the fair worked act, workers can refuse to monitor, read or even respond to work related messages outside paid hours, messages deemed unreasonable to reply to, will depend on individual circumstances. The right to disconnect applies to all businesses and organizations, except with those less than 15 workers, as policymakers are still testing it out, however, the wire understands that implementation for small businesses could be next year, though it is very much understood within the good old Australian work culture to leave work at work. This may not always be the case.

This is Associate Professor of discipline of work and organization studies from the University of Sydney, Martijn Boersma, he says that formalizing the right to disconnect could serve a larger social purpose. “Employer associations have come out and said, well, actually, we don’t need, we don’t we don’t need that right to be formalized in that way, because currently employers and employees can already have a discussion about that. The problem is that that assumes that there is a level playing field, that assumes that employers and employees have equal equal power. And in reality, a lot of employees would be fearful of bringing something like a right to disconnect or not answering phone calls outside of work hours. They would be fearful to bring that up, because there would obviously be repercussions for those workers.”

But we all know frank conversations with your manager isn’t easy at times, the unspoken rules of workplace culture could determine whether or not you’re staying back, like former advertising professional Stephanie discovered, they make you feel like that you need to work over time. “It’s a very competitive industry, so you just have always have to place your best foot forward and and just be ahead of everyone. So like, you’re forced to work more like more time, just so you can take on more work and just prove that you deserve the role and you’re you’re better than like most of the people there.”

So Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, Martijn Boersma says that reducing overwork can’t be symbolically embraced. “The right to disconnect, and many people commenting on this publicly have referred to it as such, it provides guardrails. It just provides, I suppose, guidelines and guardrails on how to handle these issues. And employers know that ultimately, if they do the wrong thing, they can be penalized, but there’s really no reason to get for it to get to that point. So you know, again, a lot of that will depend on frank conversation at the workplace level, constructive discussions about how this might work in practice. And then I think, like you know, 99.9% of cases will be will be resolved before it even gets to the Fair Work Commission.” Burnout and workplace culture has been central within the industry Zeitgeist in the last few years. However, with the government stepping in, it seems this isn’t a trivial topic that just goes on LinkedIn posts. However, how this benefits productivity, work, satisfaction or doing business in Australia can only be seen when policy makers make something much more prescriptive on what it means to have the right to disconnect.