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The right to disconnect and IT departments

right to disconnect

The right to disconnect refers to an employee’s right to disengage from work-related communications and other work outside of their normal working hours. Ontario enacted changes to the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) to enforce this right in organizations with 25 or more employees. The changes received royal assent on December 2, 2021, and require compliance by June 2, 2022.

At first blush, the right to disconnect may appear to be a labour and employment issue. However, IT departments will have significant roles to play in enabling compliance with the letter and spirit of the new requirements.

Organizations will be looking to their IT departments to implement technological or automated solutions. Employers around the globe have implemented solutions including the following, to comply with legislated or voluntary right to disconnect policies:

  1. Taking mail servers offline after business hours. Anyone emailing the organization receives an automated message that the server is
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Canadian government suspends CASL private right of action

The Canadian federal government has announced that it has suspended the coming into force of the private right of action under Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL), originally scheduled to come into force on July 1, 2017.

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Email etiquette: What Ontario can learn from France

The capacity to send and receive email on smart phone devices and laptops has fundamentally altered the working lives of many. The notion of the ‘9 to 5’ job has, in many industries, become a thing of the past. Our use of email has profoundly altered how and when we work: it has blurred the distinction between work and home lives; it has altered our view of what is appropriate communication and our expectation of how quickly people should respond. In many ways, it has simultaneously increased the volume of workplace communications and dramatically accelerated the pace at which it occurs.

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Established in 1995, First Reference is the leading publisher of up to date, practical and authoritative HR compliance and policy databases that are essential to ensure organizations meet their due diligence and duty of care requirements.

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