Australia’s Right to Disconnect laws have changed how employers manage after-hours communication. This guide explains how to create an effective Right to Disconnect policy, establish clear expectations, support employee wellbeing, and ensure compliance with workplace obligations while maintaining productivity and...
There's a particular kind of anxiety that many Australian workers know well. It's 8:30 on a Sunday evening. The family is winding down. Then the phone buzzes — a Slack message from a manager asking for a report first thing Monday, or a client email flagged as urgent that probably isn't. The instinct is to respond, because not responding feels like a risk. For years, that instinct went unchallenged by law.
That changed in August 2024, and again in August 2025, when the right to disconnect became law for every national system employee in Australia — from the largest ASX-listed corporations to the smallest suburban café. Today, having a clear, practical Right to Disconnect policy isn't just good management. For most Australian employers, it's a legal responsibility.
This guide explains what the law actually requires, what a proper policy needs to contain, how to implement it in a way that actually works, and how to avoid the mistakes that are already causing disputes in Australian workplaces.
The right to disconnect was introduced through the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Act 2024, which inserted new provisions into the Fair Work Act 2009. Under this statutory right, employees may refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact — or attempted contact — from an employer outside of their working hours, unless that refusal is unreasonable. The right also extends to work-related contact from third parties such as customers or clients.
The right applied to employers with 15 or more employees from 26 August 2024. For small businesses with fewer than 15 employees, it came into effect from 26 August 2025. As of now, the law covers every national system employer in Australia without exception.
One of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of this law is what it does not do. The right to disconnect does not prevent an employer or third party from ringing an employee, texting them, or sending them an email outside working hours. What it prevents is adverse action against an employee who chooses not to respond. The right is essentially a right to refuse, not a blanket prohibition on contact.
That distinction matters a great deal for how policies are written.
The legislation doesn't draw a hard line — it relies on a reasonableness test that requires judgment based on circumstances. The Fair Work Act lists factors to be considered when determining whether a refusal of contact outside working hours is unreasonable. These include the reason for the contact, how it is made and the level of disruption it causes, whether the employee receives compensation to be available or to work outside ordinary hours, the nature of their role and level of responsibility, and any personal circumstances such as family or caring responsibilities.
An employee who is paid an on-call allowance as part of their contract, for instance, is in a very different position from a junior administrator who receives no after-hours compensation. A genuine workplace emergency is different from a routine query that could wait until morning.
An employee's refusal will be unreasonable if the contact or attempted contact is legally required. There are also roles and industries where some after-hours availability forms a genuine and compensated part of the employment relationship — and policies need to reflect that honestly.
Some businesses have taken a passive approach — they've read the legislation and concluded that because they wouldn't punish employees for not responding, they don't need to do anything formal. That thinking creates real exposure.
Companies that fail to comply with right to disconnect obligations could face fines of up to $94,000, making it essential to have a clear and compliant policy in place.
Beyond financial penalties, the absence of a policy creates ambiguity that leads directly to disputes. When expectations aren't documented, both managers and employees operate on assumptions — and those assumptions rarely align. A written policy doesn't just protect the business legally; it protects managers from inadvertently acting in ways that breach the law, and it gives employees the confidence to actually exercise their rights without fear.
The Fair Work Commission can now hear and resolve right to disconnect disputes, and has the power to issue orders against both employers who disregard the right and employees who refuse contact unreasonably. Having documented policies and communication records matters when those disputes arise.
This sounds straightforward. In practice, it's where many policies fall apart. Working hours aren't always 9 to 5, five days a week. Many Australian workplaces run shifts, flex arrangements, part-time rosters, and hybrid patterns. Your policy needs to be specific about what working hours means — whether that's standard business hours, the hours defined in an individual's contract, or an agreed pattern for remote and flexible workers.
If working hours vary by role, say so. Vagueness here creates exactly the kind of grey area that ends up in a Fair Work dispute.
Contact isn't just phone calls. Your policy needs to address emails, SMS, messaging platforms like Microsoft Teams or Slack, task management tools, and any work-specific apps used in your organisation. List how after-hours contact happens in your workplace today — phones, SMS, email, Slack/Teams, task systems, scheduling apps, and emergency contact channels. If it isn't explicitly named in the policy, it creates confusion.
This is the heart of a workable policy. Rather than leaving employees to interpret the legislation themselves, good policies give concrete guidance. Reasonable after-hours contact would typically include genuine emergencies, legally required notifications, safety-critical situations, and contact with employees who are specifically rostered on-call with appropriate compensation. Unreasonable contact would include routine queries that can be deferred, repeated follow-ups on non-urgent tasks, and requests that disregard an employee's known personal circumstances.
Being explicit about this in your policy reduces the number of situations that become disputes in the first place.
Some roles carry a genuine expectation of broader availability — senior executives, emergency management personnel, certain healthcare and security roles. These expectations need to be documented, properly compensated, and clearly explained in both the policy and in employment contracts. You cannot simply declare that a role requires after-hours availability and use that to override the legislation. The compensation and reasonableness standards still apply.
Employees need to know what to do if they believe the right to disconnect has been breached, and managers need to know how to raise concerns if they believe a refusal is unreasonable. The Fair Work Commission's right to disconnect dispute process allows either party to apply for dispute resolution, so your internal process should ideally catch and resolve issues before they escalate to that level.
A simple, trusted internal channel — whether that's HR, a direct manager, or a nominated contact — makes a real difference to whether disputes are resolved constructively or escalate unnecessarily.
Many employees don't exercise their rights because they don't believe their employer will respect them. Your policy needs to state unambiguously that no employee will face disciplinary action, performance management, demotion, or any other adverse action for reasonably refusing after-hours contact. This isn't optional — it's a core legal protection — but stating it clearly in a policy communicates a culture of respect, not just compliance.
Writing the policy is the easy part. Embedding it in how your workplace operates is where most organisations struggle.
A mid-sized financial services firm in Sydney introduced a right to disconnect policy in late 2024 without any accompanying manager training. Six months later, the same patterns of after-hours messaging continued — managers weren't doing it maliciously, they simply hadn't adjusted their own habits. The policy existed on paper. The culture hadn't changed.
Effective implementation requires training managers before the policy launches. Managers need to understand not just what the policy says but why it matters — and how to restructure their own communication habits. Using delayed send features on emails, planning handovers before leave periods, and distinguishing between genuine urgency and habitual availability expectations are all practical skills that need deliberate development.
Employee communication matters equally. Workers are more likely to actually exercise their rights when they understand them, trust that the policy is genuine, and know exactly how to raise a concern if it's violated.
The right to disconnect intersects directly with work health and safety obligations in a way many employers haven't fully considered. As part of an employer's WHS duty to ensure the physical and psychological safety of workers so far as is reasonably practicable, employers must identify and take steps to remove or minimise hazards — which includes after-hours contact expectations that create psychosocial risks.
The Safe Work Australia model code of practice for psychosocial hazards recognises workload and work-related contact as legitimate psychosocial risk factors. An employer who ignores the right to disconnect and continues to impose after-hours contact expectations faces exposure not just under the Fair Work Act but potentially under WHS legislation as well.
The Fair Work Commission has added a right to disconnect term to all 155 modern awards. Enterprise agreements that contain terms more favourable to employees than the statutory right will continue to apply in preference to the Act.
This means employers need to check their applicable modern award — not just the Fair Work Act provisions — to understand the full scope of their obligations. Different awards may carry slightly different terms around how the right applies to specific industries and occupations.
Employment law in Australia is in an active period of reform. The right to disconnect is still relatively new, and case law from the Fair Work Commission will continue to clarify how the reasonableness test applies in different workplace contexts. Your policy should include a scheduled review cycle — at least annually — and be updated when new guidance or decisions from the Fair Work Ombudsman or Fair Work Commission change the practical landscape.
A well-written policy is the foundation. But the managers who implement it, and the employees who rely on it, all need to understand the full picture of their rights and responsibilities under Australian workplace law.
If your organisation is working through Fair Work compliance obligations — including the right to disconnect, award obligations, and employment law responsibilities — the Right to Disconnect: Implementing Fair Work Compliant Policies at the Australian Compliance Institute provides structured, legislation-aligned training built specifically for Australian workplaces.
Don't leave compliance to chance. Explore the full course library and equip your team with the knowledge they actually need.
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