The Right to Disconnect: What Small Business Owners Need to Know (It Now Applies to You)

If you run a small business, there's a workplace rule that quietly started applying to you last August, and a lot of owners still haven't caught up with it. It's the right to disconnect. Put simply, your employees can now choose not to answer that after-hours text or email in some situations, and you can't punish them for it.

It sounds like a small thing. It isn't. Get the expectations wrong and you can end up in front of the Fair Work Commission over a roster message. So here's what the right to disconnect actually means, when it does and doesn't apply, and the few practical things worth sorting out in your business.

What the right to disconnect actually means

The right to disconnect gives eligible employees the right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, outside their working hours, unless that refusal is unreasonable. The key words there are "attempted contact". Even sending the message counts. If you fire off a text at 9pm and your employee leaves it on read until the morning, that's their right.

And it isn't only about contact from you as the boss. The right also covers contact from a third party, so think clients, suppliers, or members of the public who have the employee's number. Contact itself is broad too. Calls, emails, texts, social media, messaging apps, the lot.

One thing worth being clear about: this doesn't ban out-of-hours contact. You can still send the message. What changed is that the employee gets to decide whether responding right then is reasonable, and the law backs them up when their refusal is fair.

It now applies to small businesses too

This is the bit that catches people out. The right to disconnect didn't all start at once. For bigger employers it kicked in on 26 August 2024. Small businesses got an extra year, so for you it has applied since 26 August 2025. If you've been running on the old assumption that "this doesn't affect me yet", it does now.

So who counts as a small business? Under the Fair Work Act, a small business employer is one with fewer than 15 employees. The count is a simple headcount of everyone employed at the relevant time, not a full-time-equivalent calculation. Your full-timers and part-timers all count, and so do casuals who work on a regular and systematic basis. Employees of any associated business entities get counted in too. The practical upshot: if you're sitting near that 15 mark, it's worth checking your real number rather than guessing.

When is refusing actually "unreasonable"?

This is where it gets nuanced, and where a lot of the worry comes from. An employee's refusal has to be reasonable. If it isn't, the right doesn't protect them. When working out whether a refusal is unreasonable, the law says these factors must be weighed up:

  • the reason for the contact, and how urgent it is
  • how the contact is made and how disruptive it is to the employee
  • whether the employee is paid or compensated extra for being available out of hours, or for working additional hours
  • the employee's role and level of responsibility
  • the employee's personal circumstances, including family or caring responsibilities

Other matters can be taken into account too. There's also one clear line: if the contact is required by law, refusing to read or respond is never reasonable.

Here's the honest takeaway. A senior manager on a higher salary who's been told upfront that the odd after-hours call comes with the territory is in a very different position to a casual retail assistant who's just clocked off. Same business, different reasonable. That's the point. It's about the circumstances, not a blanket rule.

Your award might add its own rules

The Fair Work Commission added a right to disconnect term to every modern award on 26 August 2024. So on top of the general right, your relevant award (or any enterprise agreement you're covered by) may spell out extra detail about how it works in your industry. If you're not sure which award covers your people, check it before you set any out-of-hours expectations, because the award terms can affect when contact is and isn't reasonable.

This is a protected right, so tread carefully

Here's the part that turns a minor annoyance into a real risk. The right to disconnect is a workplace right under the general protections in the Fair Work Act. In plain terms, you must not take adverse action against an employee for using it. No cutting their shifts, no sidelining them, no marking them down at review because they didn't jump on a Saturday email.

And general protections claims are a different animal to unfair dismissal. The usual small business exemptions that apply to unfair dismissal don't get you off the hook here. So if you react badly to someone exercising this right, the size of your business won't shield you.

What happens if there's a dispute

If you and an employee disagree about whether contact (or a refusal) was reasonable, the first step is to sort it out at the workplace. Have the conversation, talk it through, try to land on something that works. That's genuinely the expectation, not just box-ticking.

If that doesn't resolve it, either side can take the matter to the Fair Work Commission. The Commission can make orders, including a "stop order", or deal with the dispute in other ways such as holding a conference. The smart move, of course, is to never get that far. Most of these disputes come from unspoken expectations, not genuine disagreements about the law.

A few practical things to sort out now

You don't need a 40-page policy. You need clarity. A handful of things make the biggest difference:

  • Have the conversation early. Talk to your team about when, if ever, you might need to reach them after hours, and how. A quick chat now beats an argument later.
  • Match expectations to the role. If a position genuinely involves occasional out-of-hours contact (an on-call tech, say), make that clear in the position description and factor it into how the role is paid.
  • Write it down. A short, plain-English policy on out-of-hours contact gives everyone the same understanding and protects you if it's ever questioned.
  • Brief your managers. The risk usually sits with whoever's firing off the late-night messages. Make sure your supervisors know the rules before they create a problem.

The businesses that handle this well aren't the ones with the strictest policies. They're the ones where people already know where they stand.

General information, not legal advice

This article is general information to help you understand your obligations. It isn't legal advice, and it doesn't account for the specifics of your business, your award or any agreement you're covered by. For advice on your situation, check the primary sources below or speak to a workplace relations professional.

Sources:

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