Disconnecting From Work Shouldn’t Be Revolutionary, But Here We Are
The right to disconnect shouldn’t be controversial. But it is. Here’s how culture, law, and burnout collided in today’s 24/7 work obsession.
Imagine a world so backwards, so proudly allergic to boundaries, that we now require actual legislation to stop your boss from sending a late-night WhatsApp asking if you’ve “had a chance to look at slide 17.”
This isn’t satire. This is work.
The once-basic social norm of “don’t contact people after hours unless someone is literally on fire” must now be encoded in labour law. Because somewhere between productivity apps, and performative urgency, we managed to confuse activity with value, and availability with commitment.
This is the age of the “right to disconnect.” A phrase that is just about the right to stop working when you’re not supposed to be working. It should be obvious. It’s not. In fact, it’s radical. Because the bar is now so low that not bothering people at 11:47pm is considered progressive policy.
“Common Sense” Was Found Dead in a Conference Room at 7:42pm
Once upon a time, life had boundaries. You worked your agreed 40 hours, you signed off, you went home. Unless someone was bleeding or the building was on fire, no one expected to hear from you. Labour law backed this up. So did your contract. Even your manager’s passive-aggressive smile knew not to cross that line.
Then came the slow invasion.
The smartphone arrived first. Suddenly, your boss was always within thumb’s reach.
The laptop bag followed, like a needy golden retriever that follows you home.
Then, the rise of WhatsApp, Teams, and email apps, generously helping you maintain “alignment” by jolting your brain awake with notifications at 1:13am.
But the most powerful tool of all wasn’t technology. It was guilt. The quiet expectation that if you really cared, you’d just respond quickly. That if you didn’t reply to the 9:48pm “quick check-in,” someone else would and look more committed in the process.
This creep arrived dressed as flexibility, team spirit, hustle, and that classic cult slogan: we’re like a family here.
Now the numbers speak for themselves:
Over 80% of workers in Europe get contacted after hours.
Nearly 90% respond.
Around 25% reply to every message.
And 61% say they do it out of fear.
And this is Europe, where people strike over coffee temperature. Elsewhere? It’s worse.
Common sense used to say: don’t contact people after work. Now it hides behind legal codes, hoping someone still remembers what boundaries look like while dodging unread DMs.
More Work = Less Productivity = Perfectly Normal, Apparently
The entire reason managers reach for their phones after dinner to “just check in quickly” is because they believe it’s helpful. Efficient. Urgent. Strategic. Customer-focused. A sign of drive. Maybe even leadership. It’s rarely any of those things.
Because what the science keeps shouting into the void is that overwork makes people worse at their jobs. Like, measurably worse.
Workplaces that protect downtime, whether through law or actual leadership, consistently show better outcomes:
Less stress and anxiety,
Better work-life balance,
Improved sleep,
Higher satisfaction,
More motivation during the actual workday.
Give people space to log off and they show up sharper. Fresher. Human.
In fact, we now know that even the expectation of being reachable at all hours triggers stress responses. It’s called telepressure, and it’s been linked to anxiety, sleep disruption, and an overall desire to run into the sea and never return.
Meanwhile, in companies without boundaries, employees are stuck in a cycle of hyper-availability, managing inboxes while pretending to engage with dinner, children, or the slow unraveling of their own nervous systems.
If your goal is to manufacture sleep-deprived husks who can reply to emails at midnight but struggle to remember what year it is, then sure, keep the always-on model alive. But if you want creative, focused, rested adults doing good work in the daylight hours, the math is painfully simple:
More work doesn’t equal better work. It just equals more time pretending you’re working. Which, frankly, is a lot of effort for no one’s benefit.
The Southeast Asian Productivity Miracle: Just Kidding
In Southeast Asia, only Thailand has bothered to legislate the right to disconnect. And even then, the law applies only to remote workers, and only if the company has remembered to draft the right clause. In the rest of the region, the idea of not working after hours isn’t handled seriously.
Indonesia is a perfect case study in contradictions. There are strong working hour laws, strict overtime regulations, and a commendable occupational safety framework. But a statutory right to disconnect? No such thing. Could companies build one into internal policies or CBAs? Technically yes. Do they? No.
Singapore and Malaysia let you request flexible arrangements But if HR says no (or just ignores you), that’s the end of the conversation.
In the Philippines, lawmakers have filed “right to rest” bills. Then watched them die. Repeatedly.
The issue isn’t legal infrastructure. It’s cultural denial. Southeast Asia doesn’t lack the tools to create healthy boundaries. It lacks the willingness to admit that nonstop availability is not a badge of honour. It’s a symptom of poor planning, bad leadership, and a regional addiction to appearing busy at all costs.
“If You’re a Good Manager, You Don’t Need a Law. If You’re a Bad One, You Definitely Do.”
Whenever the right to disconnect is brought up, you’ll hear the same rebuttal from someone with “Chief Evangelist of Culture & Hustle” in their bio:
“We don’t need a law. Just hire better managers.”
Sure. Just like we don’t need fire exits if we just hire employees who are naturally flame-resistant. The argument sounds reasonable until you remember that labour law exists because trust runs out.
You don’t legislate for the high performers who already get it. You legislate for the lowest common denominator. For the micro-manager who thinks “work-life balance” means alternating between sending emails and reviewing spreadsheets from the couch.
And let’s stop pretending that late-night messages are a sign of strong leadership. They’re often a symptom of poor time management dressed up as hustle. If a manager can’t:
Set goals that fit into a normal workweek,
Delegate properly,
Communicate during actual business hours,
And let their team breathe without checking Teams in bed,
...then that’s dysfunction.
This is why companies like Volkswagen resorted to shutting down email servers after hours. Why countries like France, Spain, and Australia wrote laws. And why even Eurofound, found that the absence of expectation is what matters. Not the message itself, but the pressure behind it.
We don’t need to ban emails. We just need to end the creeping idea that “sent at 10:41pm” somehow means you’re more committed. It doesn’t. It just means you don’t have a calendar.
Or boundaries.
Let’s close with what might be the most conspicuous idea in the modern workplace: forty hours is enough.
You can send people to the moon, run ERs, draft international treaties, and even get through your company’s procurement approval process all within a standard week. The problem isn’t time. It’s that we keep wasting it pretending that hyper-availability equals output.
The right to disconnect is a return to sanity. It acknowledges that humans are not routers. We do not have uptime guarantees. We need rest, sleep, silence, space to be bored, and meals not eaten over a keyboard. That is not indulgence. That is functionality.
And yet here we are, needing laws to protect people from work they are not being paid to do, during hours they are not scheduled for, using devices they often paid for themselves.
If your company still resists this idea, don’t ask if productivity will suffer. Ask a better question:
“Why is our productivity built on never letting people stop?”
Because if your business only runs when no one ever logs off, then what you have is not a company. It’s a cult.
At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we help clients design smarter policies and leadership practices that boost performance without burning people out. Contact us if you’re still managing productivity in hours.