The Labour Party leader Lodewijk Asscher wants Dutch employees to have the right not to be accessible to their boss or colleagues after work. In France, this already exists: companies with more than fifty employees have the right to ignore their work email outside working hours.
Quality Time
Asscher wants this to happen after the elections in the Netherlands: “People should have the right to be unreachable at home after a long hard day at work, It is nice to spend quality time with family or friends. That is not easy when you continually hear the whispers of your boss or colleague in your mind, and you still need to view an email or receive calls”.
Asscher knows from personal experience as a vice-prime minister what it is like to be accessible day and night:“My phone must not and cannot beswitched off. Sending out a text message while I am at the football field with my son happens sometimes, but it does not matter much and I choose this for myself”, he says.
Asscher can combine his work with his family, because he has the potential for it: “The secretary knows that I do not do business dinners, because I do not think that is efficient and I prefer to eat with the people I love”. But he is concerned about people who view their work email or app messages from colleagues in the evening out of guilt or group pressure, and so also feel that they need to respond.
Vague Border
According to the Labour Party, answering e-mails or messages till late in the evening lead to ever more blurred boundaries between work and private life. This can eventually result in an excessive workload, burnout and troubled family relationships.
The plan of the Labour Party is that employers with over fifty employees have to consult with trade unions or work councils about the accessibility of employees outside working hours. They do not argue about working from home in the evening or on the weekend, but they want workers to be able to make that choice themselves.
Source: http://www.rtlnieuws.nl
Photo credit: Designed by Freepik