These French guys have all the fun. This is a country where employees have 30 days off a year, 16 weeks of full-paid family leave and even a 35 hour work week.
Now a new law is now being stipulated in the country. It says “No More Emails After Work Hours.” You have the “right to disconnect”.
According to the new law, in a company where the staff strength is 50 or more, you cannot send an email to an employee after typical work hours.
“All the studies show there is far more work-related stress today than there used to be, and that the stress is constant,” Benoit Hamon of the French National Assembly told the BBC. “Employees physically leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash— like a dog. The texts, the messages, the emails — they colonize the life of the individual to the point where he or she eventually breaks down.”
A poll by software company Adobe last year found that email is an addiction for American workers: 87 percent of people check work email outside of work, and 50 percent check it on vacation (despite studies that have consistently found that phone addiction triggers stress, anxiety, and lack of sleep).
The new law stipulates that companies negotiate policies that limit the spillover of work into their employees’ private lives. Although there are no penalties for companies that violate the amendment, companies are to establish “charters of good conduct” that specify the times which employees are free from being digitally connected to their workplaces. This right to disconnect amendment was passed as part of a controversial French labor law that some say will weaken unions and enhance employee job insecurity. The digital disconnect amendment was the one part of the law that’s been viewed favourably by the French public.
