Right to Disconnect and Employee Choice Pathway

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Right to Disconnect and Employee Choice Pathway

All businesses with employees are now impacted by the Fair Work Act right to disconnect laws and ‘employee choice pathway’ for changing from casual to permanent employment, with these now applying to small businesses from 26 August 2025. These applied to businesses with more than 15 employees in August last year.

Right to disconnect

Employees have the right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, outside their working hours unless that refusal is unreasonable. This includes employer or third-party contact.

Whether a refusal is unreasonable depends on the circumstances, factors that will be considered in making the assessment include:

•        The reason for the contact
•        The nature of the employee's role and level of responsibility
•        The employee's personal circumstances (including family or caring responsibilities)
•        How the contact is made and how disruptive it is to the employee; and
•        Any relevant extra pay or compensation the employee receives for working additional hours or                    remaining available to work out of hours

Fair Work have advised that employers and employees should talk to each other about out of hours contact and set expectations suited to their specific workplace and the employee’s role.

The right to disconnect does not prevent employers or employees from contacting each other outside of working hours, it provides a framework to ensure that only reasonable requests are made.

‘Employee choice pathway’ – Changing from casual to permanent employment

The ‘employee choice pathway’ provides casual employees with the ability to request a change to full-time or part-time (permanent) employment if they:

•        Have been employed for at least 12 months
•        Believe they no longer meet the requirements of a casual employee definition

An employer may only refuse the request to change to permanent employment where:

•        The employee still meets the definition of a casual
•        There are fair and reasonable grounds for not accepting the request
•        Accepting the request would mean the employer won’t comply with a legally required recruitment or          selection process

To find out more information, employers can visit the Fair Work Ombudsman website www.fairwork.gov.au or call Fair Work on 13 13 94 for free advice.