Reports of the death of the office may have been exaggerated, but the new government is concerned about how far its boundaries should extend into the home.

How leaders communicate and – more importantly – model a clear position on this is therefore going to become increasingly important.

What is the right to switch off?

The ‘right to switch off’ forms part of Labour’s plan to boost workers’ rights, tacking the drift towards homes becoming 24/7 offices where employees feel they have to be permanently on call.

While big changes to legislation are planned on extending day one protections against unfair dismissal and clamping down on zero hours contracts, how organisations set and police the cordon sanitaire around the working day is a far greyer area.

The government is looking at models in place in Ireland and Belgium which encourage dialogue between employers and employees to develop workplace policies or contractual arrangements that make clear what a worker is and isn’t expected to do out of hours.

What is the impact on PR?

Whatever this meaning ends up looking like, though, it’s highly likely that it will continue to vary from business to business and sector to sector. So, ensuring teams know where the line is will be a new challenge for internal comms.

Ultimately, as with all workplace culture, it is set from the top and power dynamics can trump any earnest words about work/life balance.

The judgement on whether a particular message really can’t wait until tomorrow is often a marginal call. So it is on leaders – and internal communications – to set the broad framework for what should and shouldn’t be reasonable. And, equally, for them to create the feedback loop for employees to push back individually and collectively if that framework is either too broad or being expanded by stealth.

Be mindful of your comms

Words and deeds matter here. Senior managers' email signatures increasingly include health warnings about working patterns differing and insisting that the – potentially junior – recipient doesn’t need to reply immediately. In other words, just because I’m doing work emails at 11pm doesn’t mean you need to be.

Microsoft Outlook even gives you a tap on the shoulder if you look like you’re sending an email after the sun has gone down (or before it has come up), asking if – on reflection – you really don’t think it would be better to send during most recipients’ normal working hours.

Really convincing employees that not replying out of hours won’t be held against them is not easy, because it fundamentally relies on organisations being truly seen as living the values they assert.

And of course, there is a broader behavioural trend which even these diktats or value statements can’t tackle: peoples’ own challenge to switch off even if they are encouraged – yet alone mandated – to.

The blurred space between the office and the home that the pandemic left applies in both directions. Whether absent-mindedly tapping on the work email app while the dinner is burning or jumping back in on the team WhatsApp group when you should be slumped by the pool on holiday, healthy boundaries need to be re-enforced by both managers and colleagues. A frazzled, burned-out staff is no good to anyone, after all.

But once again, getting the perfect balance right is incredibly hard to navigate, let alone write into a code of practice.

So as much as internal comms has to set out clear policies about what is and isn’t expected or accepted, leadership has set a broader tone.

And, crucially, build trust across the organisation that they mean what they say.

Whatever time of day or night they say it.