The Workplace Communication Bill of Rights. Do We Need This?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Welcome back to the show, we've got a fun one. I'm Stephen Sakach here once again with Tullio Siragusa. Let's get into it. California assembly member is proposing a right to disconnect from work bill, recognizing employees' rights to ignore communications from the employer during non-working hours.
There are exceptions for emergencies and scheduling. Violations could be fined at at least $100. I mean, I get it.
We really stress the importance of that personal and family and work-life balance time. But I'm not down with this. Do we really need a law here? This seems very flawed. It's like a lot of overreaching.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:06)
And who gets the $100, by the way? Does the employee get it? Who gets the $100? Fine.

**Stephen Sakach** (1:14)
Yeah, if the employee gets it, now you're getting all kinds of issues opening up here.
Yeah, if I send an email, and I don't expect you to answer it, but if you answer it in your non-working hours, am I in trouble now for doing that? But I think just let the marketplace work this one out. If you don't respect that time, work on a better solution. If you're going to lose good talent, if you're too annoying and you're working someone to death, and you're going late at night with all your communications and expecting them to come back, this is maybe a free market issue. I had a friend with this exact problem, and it was like texts at 3 a.m. and stuff like that. He was like, yeah, you need to set boundaries, and you need to communicate with your employer that this isn't going to work out, and also it's burning you out. You can't last with some of that stuff.
So does this really need to be in one of those protected communications areas? There are good laws for like whistleblowing, discrimination, labor relations, family medical leave, health and safety complaints. All that makes sense, right? That makes sense. But really, do we need to get into this?
I've got some communication pet peeves. And we'll get into them. But first, Tullio, yeah, your reaction on this law is?

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:50)
At first, I wasn't sure what my reaction was. And then I gave it some more thought. And first of all, I think if a company has the right culture, this shouldn't even be an issue, right? So if a company has got a culture of mutual respect and everybody treats each other and acts like responsible adults, this isn't, you don't need someone from the outside or reach in deciding how you communicate and when you communicate.
But I do know that some individuals do get, there's abuse that goes on. So the first thing I thought about, okay, imagine being a PA to a celebrity and you're expected to be accessible 24-7. That's not really fair for someone to be accessible 24-7. So maybe that PA, that celebrity needs to have three PAs, that does the day shift, the evening shift, and the midnight to morning shift. So maybe the solution is you need to hire three people instead of one because that person basically has no life. So to a certain degree, for some people, that might be a fair thing for them to have that kind of protection. But then amongst like executives, for example, managers, which is very common to catch up on things after you've had perhaps dinner with your family or they've gone to sleep and you get a little quiet time, so you catch up on some emails. And surprisingly, the other person responds. Nothing wrong with that because that's just a mutual way of getting things done.
So I think there are some benefits here for some individuals that end up being at the back and call someone who's really taking advantage of people's time when they should be with their family or doing personal things. But I'm not sure it should be a law.
So there's definitely value for certain individuals to be able to have some boundaries and have something that helps them have those boundaries. But it would be healthier for an organization to just value people's boundaries and respect them. So it's kind of like one of those things for me. You know, can we just talk about this like adults and figure out what works for me and what works for you and just come to an agreement and doesn't and that's it and move on with it instead of having some third party body deciding when and how you should communicate with them.