The right to disconnect is here. See how to handle it from a Microsoft 365 admin’s perspective.
Have you ever received an urgent email after hours or during vacation? Of course, especially if you’re an admin. The right to disconnect is meant to put a stop to this. There are some changes that you, as a Microsoft 365 admin, might need to introduce in your tenant. So, let’s get right to it.
Table of Contents:
- What is the right to disconnect?
- Why does IT need to implement changes?
- Native Microsoft 365 tools to enforce the right to disconnect
- How to handle things even better
What is the “right to disconnect”?
The right to disconnect is a proposed human right designed to help people achieve a healthy work-life balance and prevent job burnout. The basic idea is to allow people not to do anything work-related in their free time. One of the main points of this right is to prevent employers from contacting their employees during annual leave, sick leave or simply during non-working hours. For example, by using email.
While the right to disconnect has been encouraged through labor laws in multiple countries, we’re now seeing targeted legislative actions. These actions not only promote but also require employers to take measures to exercise the right to disconnect. For example, the right to disconnect act has already been introduced in Slovenia and Australia. It’s likely to become a global trend, as more countries are expected to follow.
A ban on after-work emails is not anything new. We’ve covered a similar subject back in 2014. Some companies introduced a ban on email in response to studies that show negative impact of work-related stress extending outside of office hours. But once these changes become obligatory, many companies will rush to implement changes in their policies and systems.
Details
There are a few points that require close attention, based on the Slovenian act:
- Companies need to adopt a Right to Disconnect Policy. Such a policy needs to be compliant with the Labor Law and be communicated to employees to increase awareness.
- A policy is one thing, but there are other measures that employers are encouraged to take, including soft measures (like increasing awareness) and hard measures (like restricting access to emails).
- Non-compliance will be fined. Failure to respect the right to disconnect is punishable by a fine for both the employer and the responsible person from the company.
- In case of a dispute between an employee and their employer, the employer bears the burden of proof.
- There are exceptions, such as on-call duties, urgent matters and industry-specific circumstances.
In my humble opinion, such an ambitious task cannot be achieved simply by mandating it. It requires deep changes in company culture, which is sure to take a lot of time and effort.
Regardless, there are some tools that companies can utilize to comply with the right to disconnect.
What does the right to disconnect have to do with IT teams?
Right now, you might be wondering why I’m even mentioning such a legal act on an admin’s blog. The right to disconnect is mainly about introducing or changing some policies. Here’s why I’m covering it:
We’re IT. We’re the task force that helps introduce changes.
We could say “it’s an HR problem” and we’d be (partially) right. But we prefer to get the job done, or at least try, don’t we?
The right to disconnect mentions hard measures that companies are encouraged to implement. And that is where we come in.
Fun fact: The Slovenian act mentions “shutting down the email server” as one of the good practices. I’d say it’s far from the best idea, even when it comes to on-premises servers that you actually can shut down. And this is simply impossible in case of Microsoft 365 and other cloud services. Most companies can’t afford to drop emails just because they are sent after standard office hours. And if you’re a global company, your customer service and monitoring teams probably work multiple shifts to handle customers 24/7. Shutting down servers is not a solution. At least, not a good one.
So, here’s what we have in our arsenal to face the right to disconnect from the technological point of view in Microsoft 365.
Native Microsoft 365 tools that enforce the right to disconnect
Below is a list of various tools available in your Microsoft 365 tenant that you might need to use. You probably won’t utilize all of them, and each comes with its own downsides and risks. I simply list what you have at your disposal.
Microsoft 365 quiet time
Quiet time is an Intune policy that allows you to automatically mute Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook notifications. It can be set to work for specific groups during non-working hours (e.g. for the Accounting team from 7 PM to 9 AM), specific days of the week or a date range (like public holidays).
Where to set up?
Microsoft Intune admin center > Apps > Quiet time > Policies
Pros
- Turns off notifications to promote the right to disconnect.
- Granular: can be deployed per group.
Cons
- Works with iOS and Android only (at least for now).
- Mutes email notifications and incoming call notifications, not actual emails and calls.
App protection policies (conditional launch)
Unlike “quiet time”, app protection policies actually block access to Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook. The problem is that conditional launch, the part of the policy that can take into account working hours, is available only for iOS and Android devices. You can set it up in the Warn or Block mode. And I recommend you start with the warning for a pilot group and test if it works as expected.
Where to set up?
Microsoft Intune admin center > Apps > App protection policies > Conditional launch
Pros
- Effectively forces employees to disconnect.
- Granular: can be deployed per group and includes some more advanced customization settings.
Cons
- Works only for iOS and Android devices (at least for now).
- Doesn’t work for BYOD.
Mail flow rules
You can block emails using mail flow rules. The obvious action you’d choose for that is Block the message > reject the message and include an explanation.
There are several problems with this method:
- It completely blocks emails and sends an NDR to the sender. You can include an explanation for why the message was blocked, but it’s far from being elegant. You’re sending a standard-issue NDR with an explanation that people are likely to overlook.
- Another idea is to use the Forward the message for approval action. This way, you can assign a policy enforcer (or multiple enforcers) who would approve messages after office hours begin. The problem is, the enforcer would have access to all these emails, which gives rise to some potential privacy concerns. Also, depending on the email volume in a company, this task might be either slightly troublesome or simply impossible. And you need to account for situations in which an enforcer is out of office.
- You could also utilize the Redirect the message to action to send these emails to a shared mailbox that employees check the first thing in the morning.
- The scheduler you can use for mail flow rules is heavily limited – it just has the start date and the end date. If you would like to set up a rule for every day, after office hours end, you’d have to edit the rule every single day or automate the task using PowerShell.
Where to set up?
Exchange admin center > Mail flow > Rules
Pros
- Effectively blocks emails that meet certain conditions.
Cons
- Heavy maintenance.
- Limited scheduler.
- Possible and highly probable risks.
Delay sending an email
There’s an option to manually delay sending an email in Outlook. Anyone in a company can delay sending an email until the time the recipient is online. This way, you make sure that the recipient doesn’t feel pressured to respond outside of office hours.
How to delay sending an email in Outlook
While this method does make some sense, I believe it’s a half-baked solution. It’s much better to encourage a work culture in which you can send an email to anyone, anytime, but never expect them to respond right away. If your business operations require 24/7 monitoring, then you need transparency and mutual agreement for on-call duty.
Where to set up?
In Outlook, before sending an email.
Pros
- Allows the employer to send emails outside office hours.
- Easy method used on the end-users’ end.
Cons
- It’s more of a workaround that allows users to work after hours and pretend they didn’t.
- Requires a few extra clicks per message sent.
Inbox rules (Outlook rules)
Outlook rules, similarly to mail flow rules, have a very limited scheduler. But you can combine an out of office message with a forwarding Outlook rule to handle longer out of office periods.
The problem is that you’ll either need to do this yourself using PowerShell, or add a policy and detailed instructions for users to set it up themselves.
Where to set up?
Outlook rules
Pros
- Good for longer out of office periods.
Cons
- Limited scheduler.
- High maintenance.
Conditional access
Conditional Access Policies block email access from non-company devices and IPs. It can be one of the ways to prepare for the right to disconnect if employees normally work in an office and you don’t want them to check Outlook on the web on their personal devices. That’s something worth introducing regardless of the right to disconnect to prevent unauthorized access and data leaks.
Learn more on setting up Conditional Access Policies in Microsoft 365
Where to set up?
Microsoft Entra admin center > Protection > Conditional Access
Pros
- Completely blocks access to emails based on certain conditions.
Cons
- There’s no way to set it up based on working hours.
Email signatures
One of the soft measures that you can introduce is adding office hours to company email signatures. Plus, you can add a short disclaimer which emphasizes that emails are an asynchronous method of communication and employees are not required nor expected to check their mailboxes while off-duty.
As you might expect, it’s not all ”cupcakes and rainbows”. If your email signatures are not centrally-managed, you run several risks, listed in the Cons section below. Keep in mind that you can remediate all those risks by using a reliable email signature tool.
Where to set up?
Outlook’s signature settings or in a central email signature management tool.
Pros
- An elegant and effective practice to encourage changes in the company culture.
- A disclaimer encouraging healthy work-life balance shows great leadership skills.
- Low cost (except from the time required to set up and manage).
Cons (only if signatures are not centrally managed)
- Potential brand damage if users fail to set this up correctly (broken email signature layout).
- Risk of misuse. To give you an idea, there was one quite popular disclaimer example that might have gone a bit too far:
“It is normal for me to take 2 days to read my emails and 2 more days to reflect on the matter and respond calmly. The culture of immediacy and the constant fragmentation of time are not very compatible with the kind of life I lead.” Source - Highly time-consuming to set up and manage for all employees, especially when they use various email clients. Native Microsoft 365 global email signature functionality (mail flow rules) is heavily limited.
eDiscovery
As I mentioned earlier, in case of disputes, the employer bears the burden of proof. eDiscovery is an extremely important tool that lets you hold and export all emails sent to a certain mailbox and look for certain phrases in emails.
Keep in mind that if your right to disconnect policy states that employees are not required to read emails after their working hours, those emails could have waited for the employee to get back to work. In other words, just because an email was sent on a certain day and hour, it doesn’t automatically mean that a company does not adhere to the right to disconnect.
Where to set up?
Microsoft Purview portal > Solutions > eDiscovery
Pros
- It works for gathering email-related information.
Cons
- It works only for gathering email-related information.
See our quick and easy eDiscovery tutorial
Software tips
The right to disconnect is one thing. Smooth business operations and availability for your prospects are another. Email is a crucial company asset and that’s why I’m adding some tool recommendations that make the right to disconnect compliance easier and more effective.
Advanced automatic replies
If employees are unavailable within certain hours or during holidays, it’s crucial to let your external contacts know when to expect to hear back from you.
You could set up out of office messages or use mail flow rules, like I’ve mentioned earlier, but there are more downsides than upsides to it.
As a better alternative, you can use CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 together with its built-in Autoresponder to:
- Create a single rule that automatically sends an automatic reply to the sender with details about your availability.
- Schedule recurrent automatic replies once to simplify management.
- Include self-help links and FAQs in such replies to help your customers fix some common issues on their own.
Forward in style
With CodeTwo, you can automatically forward emails to another user or a shared mailbox and let the sender know about it. It’s the most elegant way to handle long time out of office periods:
- The employer wins because they prevent email contact with employees that should be disconnected from work.
- The email sender wins because they know what’s going on and that their issue will be addressed.
- IT wins because setting this up takes only a few minutes.
- The employee wins because they can enjoy their right to disconnect.
Learn more about intelligent auto-forwarding in Microsoft 365
Hi, thanks for this article it was informative! I’ll add that with Viva Insights (free version) a user can easily disable all mobile notifications outside working hours. He can also have a follow-up of the periods when he worked outside his working hours.
That’s great, thanks for chiming in!