When it comes to protecting workers’ health and wellbeing, enacting a measure into law is only part of the story. Its potential impact on workers still depends on existing power dynamics within workplaces. The extent to which workers enjoy protections will be shaped by the industrial relations landscape that’s already in place, including the strength of trade unions, employment standards, regulatory enforcement, and worker involvement at the organizational level.
That was a key finding from a study by Institute for Work & Health (IWH) F. Mustard Postdoctoral Research Award recipient, Dr. Cherise Regier. Conducted as part of her doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford, her study examined how the same piece of worker wellbeing regulation—in this case, legislations protecting workers’ right to disconnect—played out across European Union countries.
Overall, the effects of right-to-disconnect laws on worker wellbeing are not uniform across countries or across individual characteristics,
says Regier, whose study has been published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations (doi:10.1111/bjir.70048). This is largely due to how the laws are structured and operationalized at the workplace level. When regulatory interventions depend on employers’ voluntary compliance or negotiations initiated by workers, their effectiveness is likely to be limited.
The need for right-to-disconnect measures
Calls for legislated right-to-disconnect measures have grown in recent years as remote work becomes more commonplace. Although remote work has the potential to offer workers more flexibility and work-life balance, past research has also found remote workers are more likely than on-site workers to extend their working days into evenings and weekends and to remain psychologically engaged with work during leisure time. Constant connectivity can undermine the quality of rest time and contribute to stress, fatigue and burnout.
The consequences of remote work are also gendered,
adds Regier. While remote work may offer women greater flexibility to manage competing home and work demands, research has shown that it often does so by allowing them to tend to both simultaneously rather than reducing overall demands on their time,
she adds.
Beginning in 2017, several member states of the European Union adopted right to disconnect
policies to protect workers’ rights to disengage from work-related communication outside of working hours. They embedded these new measures within existing regulatory frameworks, allowing for an interesting cross-country analysis. (See sidebar for more details.)
Right-to-disconnect policies in theory should strengthen workers’ control over their work and limit employers’ expectations of constant availability,
says Regier. Based on previous research on job control, having greater autonomy over working time should be linked with lower stress and improved life satisfaction, happiness, and self-rated health. Whether that’s the case was what my study set out to examine.
Three measures of wellbeing
To measure the impact of right-to-disconnect legislations on worker wellbeing, Regier drew on the European Social Survey, which is conducted in 30 countries every two years and is designed to be nationally representative. She drew on results from six survey waves from 2010 to 2020, which let her examine wellbeing before and after legislation was introduced. Her study focused on workers in private-sector firms who worked in jobs that could be done remotely. Their counterparts in European countries that didn’t institute right-to-disconnect measures were used as the comparison group. For her analysis, Regier used survey results related to three dimensions of wellbeing: life satisfaction, happiness and self-rated health. She also looked at changes in total working time.
Regier’s study found key differences between countries. In places like France and Belgium, where workers have stronger protections and unions play a bigger role, the laws appeared more effective and were linked to better wellbeing. For example, in Belgium, there were positive and, in some cases, statistically significant improvements in life satisfaction and happiness after the policy was introduced.
In contrast, in Spain, Ireland, and Portugal, where workers generally have weaker protections than in France or Belgium, the study found weaker or even negative associations. For example, there were declines in life satisfaction in Portugal and health in Ireland. This suggests that simply having the law is not enough and that it works best when there are strong supporting systems in place to enforce it,
says Regier.
She also highlights the gender differences found in the study. Men seemed to benefit more consistently from right-to-disconnect laws, with statistically significant improvements in happiness and health found among Belgium men. In contrast, among women, the study found only happiness gains in France, no gains elsewhere, and even statistically significant declines in health in Ireland and in life satisfaction in Spain and Portugal. One explanation is that, even if women reduce work-related demands, they may take on more unpaid work at home, such as caregiving or housework, which offsets the right-to-disconnect work benefits,
she says.
Implications of study results
The differences across the five countries studied point to the role of industrial relations institutions in moderating the effects of right-to-disconnect legislations,
says Regier.
In countries with stronger worker representation rights, bargaining structures and enforcement capacity, right-to-disconnect policies have the potential to act as effective constraints on employer expectations of constant availability, she says. In contrast, in countries that have weaker or more decentralized collective bargaining, right-to-disconnect protections have to rely mainly on firm-level implementation or on workers’ ability to invoke the protection without legal recourse.
The results underscore the importance of analyzing labour regulation through a lens that considers institutional power, enforcement and collective voice,
says Regier. This study shows that right-to-disconnect legislation does not operate as a uniform policy instrument. But rather, it raises questions about existing cross-national differences and structural inequalities in the regulation of working time and digital availability.