Is the Government’s ‘right to switch off’ about to save us from burnout, or are we just swapping late-night emails for daytime stress-fests? The plans, which were meant to feature in the Employment Rights Bill but have instead been deferred subject to a consultation, would see workers empowered to disconnect from their jobs outside regular hours, including the right to refuse to take on extra work at the weekends.

Post-pandemic, the proliferation of remote working practices means that work can now easily take over what should be an employee’s free time. Blurring the boundaries between work and home in this way risks turning homes into “24/7 offices”.

Reinforcing this is the use of digital work platforms, such as Slack, Teams and WhatsApp. Those seem to create an “always-contactable, never-off” working environment. This has led to concerns over employee burnout, stress and other mental health considerations.

The policy – by allowing employees to separate their work and home life and by setting out clear expectations of normal working hours and when staff should expect to be contacted – is intended to reduce burnout and improve productivity.

The form this will take is currently unclear: originally envisaged as being a formal right enshrined in law, the policy appears to have been watered down to a code of practice agreed by employers and employees.

The Government should stick to this latter, watered-down approach. A one-size-fits-all right to switch off would be a misguided attempt at preventing burnout amongst workers.

The initial proposal was essentially a ban on work communications outside of working hours. This means workers would not be expected to check emails or take work calls out of hours and bosses would not be allowed to pester them.

Though designed to reduce burnout, the approach could easily increase burnout by undermining flexible working practices. Whilst undoubtedly contributing to an ‘always on’ culture, such practices have also brought benefits to many employees, offering significant opportunities to better fit work around family life and to make more efficient use of one’s day.

If firms were compelled to restrict work contact solely to contracted hours, they would likely not only revert to fixed and rigid ‘normal’ working hours, but also seek to maximise the use of those hours, expecting employees to be constantly available and fully occupied.

The flexibility gained through work-from-home practices could easily be lost, replaced with rigorous monitoring of employee activity. The stress of always being contactable would be replaced by new forms of stress, caused by increased daytime work pressures. This is not conducive to the policy’s stated goal of reducing burnout.

Compounding this is the fact that a right to switch off would not address the real issues at the heart of ‘always on’ working cultures which, though exacerbated by remote working, have arguably existed long before its widespread adoption. A right to disconnect would not itself stop people worrying about their work at weekends or during the evenings and is therefore unlikely to properly tackle the stress that they are under. Furthermore, any problems faced by employees would still be there the next time they log on. Simply giving workers the legal right to choose not to respond to work communication outside of working hours would not resolve these issues.

The fundamental problem is that a right to disconnect would not help change the organisational culture or business practices that lead employees to feel they cannot disconnect in the first place.

Additionally, all of this says nothing about the challenges of trying to apply a universal right to disconnect to the plethora of employment types, sectors and industries within the UK labour market. Such an attempt would lead either to an overly simplistic, one-size-fits-all approach that is likely to be unworkable or harmful in many industries or an approach so flexible that it is of no meaningful impact.

Given these challenges, instead of going for an inevitably doomed attempt at formulating a universal right to disconnect, the Government should follow its current suggestion of encouraging companies to engage with their employees and to come to an agreement on a code of practice that works best for them. Nor should this be limited to right to disconnect policies, but rather should be expanded to clarify areas such as expectations of workload, performance goals and performance measurement and monitoring. This would not only allow firms to understand the issues that are driving unhealthy working practices, but also take a more nuanced approach to devising solutions, accounting for the particularities of their own workplace demands.

Workers and employers can come to agreements that suit their needs without heavy-handed state intervention. The Government should let them.

Nathan Stone is a Bright Blue member and is studying for a master’s in public policy at King’s College London. He tweets under @NathanStoneYC.