Ms Joanne Mangan:

On the right to disconnect, it is important that there is a legal framework in place to protect employees from overworking. I guess before I get into that there are a couple of things to highlight. Yesterday the Central Statistics Office came out with some figures around remote workers. It found that remote workers had the highest level of job and life satisfaction of any worker group in Ireland. That is important to highlight. While there is a lot of talk about overworking and over-productivity in a remote setting, it is not really borne out in those statistics.

Having said that, there are risks of a greying of boundaries between work and life when we work from home. Anecdotally we hear people saying they work later. There is evidence to show people are more productive when they work from home. I do not think there is evidence as to whether that is down to more hours being worked or because people can focus better and be more efficient and effective when they work remotely. I would be leaning more towards the latter. Nevertheless it is important that there are measures in place to protect employees from the risk of overworking. The right to disconnect is an important piece of the legislation to protect against that.

I also think the onus is on employers and managers, particularly. This is a very difficult time for people managers. There are a lot of transitions and transformations they need to make. Wellness needs to be top of mind for employers. For most of the employers we work with, including Glofox, wellness is something they are very aware of with their employees, particularly because of the last two years and the situation we have all found ourselves in. The companies we work with are very mindful of people's time and put measures in place. For example, people would know from day one that they are not expected to answer a work email outside of working hours. Email sign-offs include a wording to the effect that if the person receives the email outside their working hours they do not need to answer it. That is repeated all the time, it is not just said at the beginning and then forgotten by everyone. It is reinforced. That is what companies need to do. They need to be very specific when employees start, telling them they are not expected to answer emails if they are working remotely and it is evening time, that they need to turn off their phone in the evening.

One important benefit of remote working is flexibility. We are also hearing a lot, particularly from parents who log on early in the morning and do an hour or two before the kids get up. Then they take an hour or two off and get the kids off to school, then they go back in. My daughter comes home from school at 2.30 p.m. and I take an hour to be with her. Then I log back in and work until a little bit later in the evening. We do not want to lose the benefit of the flexibility. People like to schedule work around their life but we do not want work to take over their lives. There is a balance to be found.