Right to Disconnect: A 2026 Guide for HR Leaders

Sunday-night emails. Slack pings during dinner. The “quick message” sent to someone on vacation, “just in case.” The right to disconnect isn’t a soft topic anymore — it’s one of the clearest signals of a healthy workplace culture, and one of the most under-managed legal exposures Canadian employers face today.

With hybrid and remote work now the norm for knowledge workers, the line between work and personal life has effectively dissolved. And yet, most organizations still don’t have a real strategy in place. This guide covers what you need to know: what the right to disconnect actually is, what the law requires (federally, in Ontario, in other provinces), the real risks of doing nothing, and the levers that actually move the needle.

With expert insights from Ariane Béland, HR Strategist at Go RH, who advises business leaders and HR professionals on these issues every day.

What is the right to disconnect?

The right to disconnect is an employee’s ability to disengage from work-related communications (emails, messaging apps, collaboration platforms) outside of their working hours, including evenings, weekends, vacation, and other leaves.

It works on two levels:

• It’s a right for the employee: the ability to not respond to after-hours work communications without facing reprisal. And it’s a duty for the employer: the obligation to put policies, tools, and a culture in place that make that right enforceable in practice.
• One important nuance: the right to disconnect does not mean a total ban on after-hours communication. It means every after-hours contact must be justified, properly framed, and — if it leads to actual work — recognized and compensated.

Why this is now a critical HR issue

Three forces have converged since 2020 to make this a board-level conversation.

First, the porosity of hybrid work. As Ariane Béland puts it:

Second, mental health at work, which has shifted from a wellness perk to a legal obligation in most jurisdictions. Hyperconnectivity is now formally recognized as a psychosocial risk factor, alongside overload and harassment.

Third, retention and engagement. Top talent (particularly younger professionals) consistently rank work-life boundaries among their top three employer-selection criteria. An “always-on” culture is now a competitive disadvantage in the talent market.

What the law actually says

Legal frameworks vary widely by country — and across Canada, by province.

• France’s 2016 El Khomri law was the first major legislation of its kind, requiring employers with 50+ employees to negotiate disconnection terms.
• Ireland introduced a Code of Practice on the Right to Disconnect in 2021, giving employees an explicit right covered by the Workplace Relations Commission.
• Belgium’s 2022 law obliges employers with 20+ employees to formally adopt right-to-disconnect provisions through collective agreement or workplace rules.
• The EU voted in 2021 in favor of an EU-wide directive; implementation is still in progress.
• In the United States and the United Kingdom, there’s no federal framework. Some U.S. states and cities are exploring legislation, but most regulation happens contractually or through workplace policies.

The Canadian framework: what every employer needs to know

Canada doesn’t have a single, unified approach. The legal picture shifts depending on whether your business is federally regulated or falls under provincial jurisdiction, and within that, provinces are at very different stages.

• Ontario has gone the furthest: Under the Working for Workers Act, 2021, which amended the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA), employers with 25 or more employees are required to have a written policy on disconnecting from work. The policy must be in place and shared with employees within 30 days of hire. Importantly, the law doesn’t create an absolute right to never be contacted — but it does require employers to define what disconnection looks like in their organization.
• Federal jurisdiction (Canada Labour Code): no formal right to disconnect, but existing rules govern hours of work, rest periods, overtime, and compensation. The federal government has signaled interest in introducing a right to disconnect framework, but no legislation has been enacted to date.
• British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the Atlantic provinces: no specific right-to-disconnect legislation. However, employment standards legislation in each province governs hours of work, overtime, and compensable time — meaning an employee responding to work communications after hours could trigger overtime obligations.
• Quebec: no explicit obligation to have a disconnection policy, but the right is generally understood to flow from existing obligations under the Act respecting labour standards and from the employer’s duty to protect employee psychological health. To summarize: “The employer must structure after-hours communications to prevent them from becoming an implicit or systematic expectation. In practice, that means clarifying when employees can be contacted, by whom, and under what circumstances — and making sure any work performed outside scheduled hours is acknowledged and compensated.“

The takeaway across provinces: even where there’s no specific right-to-disconnect law, implicit expectations of after-hours availability can expose employers to claims for unpaid hours, overtime, and psychological injury.

What it really costs employers to ignore this

Most organizations still underestimate their exposure. Here are the four most common categories of risk:
Unpaid hours and overtime claims (and the threshold is lower than people think!). As Ariane Béland makes clear:

Employment standards complaints: they have been rising steadily since hybrid work became mainstream.

Psychological health claims: burnout, prolonged absences, and (in some provinces) workers’ compensation claims tied to recognized work-related mental injury.

And finally, engagement and retention: the least visible cost, but often the most strategic. Higher turnover, quiet quitting, weakened employer brand.

5 levers for a right-to-disconnect strategy that actually works

A standalone written policy isn’t enough. To make disconnection real, you need to act on five fronts at once.

1. A written policy — but an operational one

Mandatory in Ontario for employers with 25+ employees and strongly recommended everywhere else. The most common pitfalls observed in practice: vague language, unlimited exceptions, inconsistency between the policy and actual culture, no compensation mechanism, and no coverage plan.

A good policy spells out when employees can be contacted, by whom, under what circumstances, and how after-hours work is recognized.

2. A formal coverage plan

Without a written plan identifying who covers whom (and with what decision-making authority) every absence (vacation, sick leave, training) creates implicit expectations on the absent employee or a workload spike for the person filling in.

3. Explicit communication norms

Clearly outline expected response times, which channels to use, and a concrete definition of what counts as an “emergency.” Vague rules don’t protect anyone. It’s often more useful to give examples of what doesn’t require a response than to list what does.

4. Leading by example

The most powerful lever is often the most neglected: managers’ behaviours need to be exemplary when it comes to the right to disconnect. Otherwise, the cultural norm overrides the formal rule.

If a manager sends a non-urgent email at 9 p.m. to someone on vacation, it doesn’t matter what the policy says: the implicit norm wins.

5. Tools that support the practice

It may be beneficial to implement tools that allow for the default deactivation of notifications outside of business hours, the scheduling of delayed email delivery, clear out-of-office statuses on collaboration tools, and automated compensation mechanisms.

Employee leave management software also lets you see who is away and when at a glance and share vacation schedules with the entire team. This helps avoid unexpected requests and ensures that task assignments are no longer rushed.

In short, your technology tools should support your company culture, not contradict it!

Three things to put in place before the first wave of vacation requests lands:

1. A formal coverage plan (who covers whom, with what decision-making authority).
2. Clear communication rules (response windows, channels, what counts as an emergency).
3. And an organizational message backed by leadership modeling — meaning no non-urgent emails to people on leave, full stop.

For managers who struggle to disconnect themselves, here is some advice: