Describe a New Law You Would Implement in Your Country

The law I'd bring in, if I had the power, is a legal right to disconnect — meaning that once your working day is over, your employer simply isn't allowed to contact you about work, and you're under no obligation whatsoever to reply. A few countries in Europe have already done something along these lines, and honestly, I think it's long overdue where I live.

In practical terms it would be fairly straightforward. Every employment contract would have to state your working hours explicitly, and outside those hours any work email, message or call would carry no obligation at all — you could open it the next morning and nobody could hold that against you. There'd be exceptions, obviously: emergency services, hospitals, anything genuinely time-critical. And rather than fining people for sending a message at ten at night, which strikes me as unenforceable, I'd put the burden on the employer to prove they aren't penalising staff who don't respond. That's the bit that actually bites.

As for who it affects — on the face of it, office workers. But I'd argue the real beneficiaries are people in junior positions, who are the ones who feel they can't say no. If you're established in your career you can already get away with ignoring a message at midnight. If you're two months into your first job and worried about your probation, you can't, and that's precisely the power imbalance a law is supposed to correct.

The reason I think it's needed is that technology has quietly erased a boundary that used to exist by default. A generation ago, when you left the building, you were genuinely unreachable — not out of principle, just because there was no way to reach you. Now the office is in your pocket and it never closes. I've watched friends check their phones at dinner, on holiday, at two in the morning, and describe it as completely normal, which I find quite telling.

And the consequences aren't trivial. Burnout is rising sharply, and there's decent evidence that people who never properly switch off are less productive, not more — they're just spreading the same amount of work across more hours and sleeping worse for it. So it isn't only a wellbeing argument; there's an economic case too, which is usually what gets a law over the line.

I should be fair and say there's a counter-argument. Some people genuinely prefer flexibility — they'd rather finish early, collect their children and answer emails at nine in the evening, and a blunt law could take that away from them. That's why I'd frame it as a right you can waive rather than a ban you can't, so the choice stays with the employee. But the default has to change, because at the moment the default is that you're always available, and nobody ever actually agreed to that.