The Right To Disconnect – What It Means For Small Business In Practice

Understand what the Right to Disconnect means for small businesses. Learn how communication practices, manager behaviour, and workplace expectations can impact compliance and reduce risk.

The Right to Disconnect is one of those workplace reforms that sounds straightforward on the surface – until you try to apply it in a real small business.

From 26 August 2025, small business employers are required to comply with the Right to Disconnect. 

Much of the public conversation has focused on employee wellbeing and work-life balance. Those outcomes matter. 

But for small businesses, the more pressing issue is often simpler –  and riskier:

Would the way you and your managers actually communicate stand up to scrutiny if it were questioned?

That’s the real shift this reform brings.

What the Right to Disconnect actually requires

Contrary to some headlines, the Right to Disconnect does not mean employees can never be contacted after hours, and it doesn’t prohibit businesses from responding to urgent issues.

Instead, the law introduces a reasonableness test.

Employees have the right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to work-related contact outside their working hours unless that contact is reasonable in the circumstances.

That one word — reasonable — is doing a lot of work.

Reasonableness isn’t defined by what you intended, or by how your business has always operated. It’s assessed based on a range of factors such as:

• the employee’s role and level of responsibility
• their hours of work and remuneration
• the purpose and urgency of the contact
• the frequency of after-hours contact
• whether the employee is paid or rostered for availability.

In other words, the focus isn’t on whether you meant to pressure someone. It’s on whether the expectation to respond would appear reasonable if viewed objectively.

Common misunderstandings we’re seeing already

One of the biggest risks for SMEs is misunderstanding what the Right to Disconnect is — and isn’t.

Misunderstanding 1: ‘It just means people can ignore emails’. Not quite. The right is about expectations, not just behaviour. If your culture or management style creates an expectation that after-hours messages should be read or acted on, that’s where risk arises — even if no one ever explicitly says so.

Misunderstanding 2: ‘We’ll just write a policy’. Policies matter, but they don’t outweigh reality. If your policy says one thing and daily practice says another, it’s your conduct that will be assessed. A policy that doesn’t reflect what actually happens provides little protection if the business has to explain its approach.

Misunderstanding 3: ‘This only applies to office jobs’. The Right to Disconnect applies across industries. We’re seeing just as much exposure in trades, care, hospitality, NFPs and service-based businesses, particularly where rosters, client demands, or informal availability are involved.

Where small businesses most often get caught out

The highest-risk scenarios rarely involve dramatic breaches. They’re usually built on everyday habits.

Consider a few common examples.

• A supervisor regularly sends texts on Sunday afternoons to ‘get a head start on the week’.
• A manager posts tasks in a team chat late at night, adding ‘no need to respond now’.
• An admin employee answers emails after hours because ‘it’s easier to keep things moving’.
• A casual worker is expected to be contactable ‘just in case’, but there’s no on-call arrangement or pay attached.

None of these situations are malicious. Most are well-intentioned. But intention isn’t the test.

The question becomes… would those patterns of communication look reasonable to an external reviewer, not just to the people involved?

The legal test is about patterns, not one-offs

Another important point for SMEs is that the Right to Disconnect is rarely assessed on a single message in isolation.

What matters is pattern and frequency.

An occasional urgent call is very different to repeated after-hours contact about routine matters. 

Over time, small actions can establish an implied expectation that employees are always available;  even if no one ever says so directly.

This is why the reform is as much about how work is organised and communicated as it is about any individual decision.

Why manager behaviour matters so much

If there is one area where small businesses are most exposed, it’s manager behaviour as they often:

• work long hours themselves
• communicate quickly and informally
• feel pressure from clients or deadlines
• assume others share their flexibility.

Under the Right to Disconnect, that behaviour is no longer neutral. It is often treated as evidence of how work is genuinely performed.

From a compliance perspective, it doesn’t matter that a manager ‘didn’t expect a response’. What matters is whether the way they communicate creates, reinforces or normalises an expectation that employees should remain engaged after hours.

This is why training and guidance for managers is critical. 

The Right to Disconnect isn’t about stopping work, it’s about ensuring managers understand where boundaries sit and how their habits can unintentionally cross them.

Policies help – but only if they’re believable

Yes, small businesses should have a Right to Disconnect policy or clear policy provisions that address:

• ordinary hours of work
• principles around after-hours contact
• what counts as urgent
• availability or on-call arrangements
• protections against adverse action.

But the key question isn’t ‘Do we have a policy?’

It’s ‘Does this policy reflect what actually happens day to day?’

If policies describe an idealised version of work that doesn’t exist in practice, they create risk rather than reduce it. Regulators and tribunals look at consistency – not just good intentions.

Client pressure doesn’t remove your obligations

One of the most common concerns we hear from SMEs is…  ‘but our clients expect a response.’

That may be true, but client expectation doesn’t override employment law.

The Right to Disconnect doesn’t mean clients can’t be serviced. It does mean businesses need clearer systems – e.g.

• escalation pathways for genuinely urgent matters
• shared inboxes rather than direct manager contact
• clearer definitions of what is actually urgent
• structured or compensated on-call arrangements.

Handled properly, these approaches protect both the business and the employee and reduce reliance on ad-hoc after-hours communication.

Why this reform matters beyond communication

Although the Right to Disconnect is framed around contact, in practice it often reveals bigger questions:

• Are people doing work after hours that isn’t recorded?
• Are availability expectations informal or undocumented?
• Do timesheets reflect real working patterns?
• Do manager practices align with payroll processes?

This is why the Right to Disconnect shouldn’t be treated as a ‘soft’ reform. It can quickly become the starting point for broader scrutiny of how work is organised, recorded and managed.

A practical way forward for SMEs

For many small businesses, the biggest risk is not deliberate non-compliance — it’s assumption.

• Assuming people don’t mind.
• Assuming no one will raise an issue.
• Assuming long-standing habits are still acceptable.

The Right to Disconnect challenges those assumptions by asking a simple but uncomfortable question: