The right to disconnect is law. But your boss still decides.

Does the right to disconnect really exist, if nobody else in the company does?

Years ago, still a green intern, I heard colleagues comment on other colleagues who — after their standard eight hours at the desk — left the office at 6pm, punctually. The verdict? “Part-time again today.” Of course that person hadn’t done “part-time.” They’d simply worked the hours they owed, then gone to do the grocery shopping.

Me? I don’t think I ever left at 6pm. Partly out of love for the work. Partly out of an obsession with finishing things — but in a multinational the work potentially never finishes, and in fact I often walked out after 9pm, when the guard had to set the alarms and lock the building. And partly because of those corridor comments.

And I’d be lying if I said I helped the culture evolve. I fed the expectation that this kind of dedication was normal. For me it was. It was also because I saw many executives do exactly the same.

What I’m getting at is that this then produces: a) shared culture, b) behavioral expectations, c) psychological pressure, more or less visible, d) sly managerial tricks from a few overbearing bosses.

The right to disconnect is built to protect exactly these situations: the ones where the line between professional responsibility and permanent availability slowly turns invisible. Sometimes through the abuse of whoever’s in charge. Other times — and this is perhaps more insidious — without anyone intending to abuse anyone at all.

And yet a necessary protection can become a problem when it’s applied rigidly and indiscriminately. Contemporary work also demands responsibility, autonomy, reciprocity. Sometimes a little extra is needed, for the collective good.

What’s needed is common sense. And common sense, unfortunately, can’t be legislated or taught.

The numbers say common sense isn’t winning. Across much of Europe the right to disconnect is law, yet the Microsoft Work Trend Index 2025 — Microsoft 365 telemetry plus 31,000 workers surveyed across 31 markets — records that meetings scheduled after 8pm grew 16% in a year.

The law exists. The problem remains.

The problem is no longer legal. It’s cultural. It’s about power dynamics inside organizations, and it starts at the top.

I know from experience. When I moved to the other side of the desk, I sent the 10pm message too — “so tomorrow you can keep going.” I was convinced I was doing the team a favor: knowing I’d be in meetings and hard to reach the next day, I preferred to write my comments at odd hours rather than become the bottleneck. Nobody was obliged to answer. Yet everyone answered, and quickly.

It took me a long time to understand I wasn’t helping them. Without meaning to, I was stretching their availability and feeding the very culture I’d lived through as an intern.

If the law isn’t enough, what is?

It isn’t just my story. Eurofound — the EU agency on working conditions — states it plainly, data in hand: legislation alone doesn’t guarantee that all workers actually benefit from the right to disconnect. The decisive factor is the absence of a company culture that genuinely recognizes that right.

You can write the most perfect policy in the world. But if the company rewards whoever is always available, that policy becomes hot air.

The infinite workday

While laws multiply, what do people actually do?

The Microsoft data cited above sketches what the report calls the “infinite workday.” Beyond evening meetings up 16%, 40% of workers check email before 6am, and nearly 30% are back in the inbox by 10pm.

A formal right is worth exactly as much as the real chance to exercise it without consequences.

An after-hours meeting can, on paper, be declined. But if declining has a cost, if saying no makes you look less dedicated than the others and touches your career, then the choice is only free on paper. Like the right itself.

The 7:30pm call everyone is assumed to join. The Friday email at 7:15pm nobody forces you to read, yet everybody reads. Permanent availability, with no need and no urgency, mistaken for dedication.

The no, possible in theory, becomes hard to practice.

The distance between the right to disconnect and the freedom to disconnect is exactly this: the distance between what a company declares and what, silently, it rewards.

So what now?

If you’re a leader, you can start with concrete things. Define the hours within which meetings get scheduled. Ask yourself how often the urgent work is genuinely urgent. Look at what time your managers write, and above all, which behaviors get rewarded. Measure results, not permanent availability. And consider a leader’s ability to organize their team’s work without systematically turning the exception into the rule.

Because success isn’t measured in hours worked, nor in time and energy sacrificed for nothing. It’s measured in results.

And perhaps a good company culture is measured by this too: by the ability to close the laptop without the feeling of wronging someone.