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Is your boss allowed to contact you after hours?

There is currently no official law that bans bosses from contacting employees out of working hours and outside of work.

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Following Portugal's new law preventing companies from contacting employees outside of working hours, people have been calling for similar changes in the UK Can employers contact you outside of work? Your rights explained after new Portugal law Portugal is introducing a new law that bans employers from contacting workers outside of normal office hours. Companies that do contact workers during evenings and weekends will face fines. It has been introduced due to the increased amount of people working from home during the pandemic.

Firms must also contribute to expenses resulting from remote working.

The law will not apply to companies with fewer than 10 employees. Companies are also required to organise meetings every two months, in a bid to tackle loneliness. Many countries are expected to make adjustments to employment laws as the pandemic has changed many of the ways companies approach working. So, read on to find about your employee rights in the UK.

Can my bosses contact me outside of work?

There is currently no official law that bans bosses from contacting employees out of working hours and outside of work. However, people have a human right to a private life, or rather a "reasonable expectation of privacy". Bosses must respect this and you cannot be monitored everywhere. And, companies may also have their own internal policies that they enforce, which prevents workers from being contacted outside of working hours. The pandemic has made it far easier for people to contact you electronically as this is what remote working relies upon. It can mean that the general end of day cut-off that used to exist with the simple act of going home has had its lines blurred. It means that though no strict law says that you cannot be contacted outside hours, switching off and not answering emails outside of working hours should not be frowned upon.

Could the UK introduce a law surrounding employees being contacted outside of work?

In June, Trade union Prospect wanted the government to include the 'right to disconnect' in an employment bill in the House of Commons. This aims to ban bosses from "routinely emailing or calling" outside a person's set working hours. Prospect's deputy general secretary, Andrew Pakes, said: "While digital technology has kept us safe during the pandemic, for millions of people, working from home has felt more like sleeping in the office, making it harder to fully switch off." The bill's second reading is scheduled for March, 2022, but currently contains no mention of a right to disconnect. Italy, Phillippines, Germany and France have similar laws already and Canada are considering the legislation.

MPs in Portugal rejected this proposal.

Of the new laws in Portugal, the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Ana Mendes Godinho, said: "The pandemic has accelerated the need to regulate what needs to be regulated. "Telework can be a 'game changer' if we profit from the advantages and reduce the disadvantages."

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Are sheds a British thing?

A private place for reflection, for work, for creativity, a shed may not be exclusively British – the Shed of the Year now has an international category. But it remains an integral part of British life.

bbc.com - How the humble garden shed inspires genius - BBC Worklife

Britain is often quoted as having more sheds per capita than any other country. Around two thirds of Brits own a shed; of those who don’t, 44% would like to. The annual ‘Shedonomics’ survey by Cuprinol also found that 62% of Brits would be deterred from buying a home if it didn’t have a shed or a garden big enough for one, while UK shed listings on Airbnb are in high demand. Even former Prime Minister David Cameron has splashed out £25,000 on one: he plans to use it to write his memoirs.

So what is it about the British and their garden sheds? And can time spent in a shed really be a boon to your creativity and productivity?

It may be no surprise that, with both flexible working and open offices on the rise, workers seem more interested in private, quiet spaces. The 2016 What Workers Want survey found that more than half of employees were dissatisfied with the noise levels in their offices and with hot-desking, and that more than a quarter thought their workplace’s design made them less productive. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of a million more people work from home in the UK today than a decade ago. As humble as it seems, a private shed is the antithesis to the open-office plans disliked by many workers – and one that a growing cadre of freelancers, entrepreneurs and flex workers are able to use.

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