Right to disconnect

What the right actually is

It is a right to reasonably refuse out-of-hours contact, not a prohibition on employers sending it. Whether a refusal is unreasonable depends on factors in the Act: the reason for the contact, how it is made and how disruptive it is, the employee's role and level of responsibility, compensation for availability, and personal circumstances including caring responsibilities. A senior manager paid for availability sits differently to a part-time employee messaged at 9pm about a roster.

What it means for employers

The risk is less the individual dispute than the pattern. Persistent after-hours contact is simultaneously a right-to-disconnect issue, a psychosocial hazard (high job demands) and an unpaid-work signal, and all connect to the same root cause: how work and staffing levels are designed. Practical responses are explicit availability expectations by role, on-call arrangements that are named and paid as such, and norms about message timing that leaders actually model.

How disputes are handled

Workplace level first. If that fails, either party can go to the Fair Work Commission, which can make stop orders in either direction. The right is also protected by the general protections, so adverse action against an employee for exercising it carries the reverse onus and uncapped exposure that regime brings.