Is the Right to Disconnect at Odds With the US’s Hustle Culture?
Yet, despite near-unanimous support for the policy among senior leaders and workers, the results of our report hint that the US’s current working culture may prevent the nation from following in the footsteps of their European and South American counterparts anytime soon.
Managers clearly aren’t ready to pull the plug on ‘out of office’ communications yet, with a large segment (39%) of respondents admitting that they would reach out to staff in the case of an emergency, even if they were on vacation. Surprisingly, the younger generation is actually leading the pack on the matter, with 37% of Gen Z managers saying that they would contact workers out-of-hours for a critical business issue, compared to just 28% of managers aged 45-54.
Most workers feel obliged to respond too, with 83% of employees still feeling somewhat obligated to respond to work messages while on vacation, in contrast to just 17% who were happily able to disconnect.
US legislators aren’t jumping on the policy, either. While California and New Jersey have recently considered rolling out right-to-disconnect laws, no states have officially rolled out the policy. But for many of us, this news won’t be surprising. The US is one of the only nations to mandate no official PTO policy and place no limits on how many hours a person can work. As a result, the harsh reality is that it’ll be much harder to implement a right-to-disconnect law on home soil, compared with countries with stricter employee protections like France and Spain.
This doesn’t mean you should lose hope though. The fact that the policy is backed by so many senior leaders suggests that executives are finally starting to take employee wellbeing more seriously. What’s more, while a federal right to disconnect law may not be on the cards any time soon, it’s still possible to land a job with an employer that respects your boundaries, as well as your right to snooze work notifications when on your well-deserved vacation.
