Policy · Employment & Workplace Relations
Out-of-hours contact and right to disconnect policy (Fair Work Act s 333M)
A workplace policy on contact outside working hours that respects the employee right to disconnect: when contact is reasonable, role-based expectations, on-call and allowance arrangements, contact required by law, AI and automated messages, and how disputes are raised.
- Kind
- Policy. A policy or procedure for a firm or client.
- Where it applies
- Australia, Commonwealth
- AI use
- Yellow AI can help in set ways. A lawyer checks specific points before use.
- Law stated as at
- 18 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked on 18 October 2026 against the 2 authorities it cites, for Australia and Commonwealth.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use for a national system employer setting expectations about after-hours calls, emails, messages and system alerts. Check the applicable modern award’s right to disconnect clause and any enterprise agreement term first; a more favourable agreement term continues to apply.
Used for these tasks
Each task page says how far AI may help with the task and what the lawyer must review.
How AI may be used
AI may adapt the policy to the employer’s roles, rosters and award clauses and map which roles have on-call arrangements, but the lawyer checks it against s 333M, the applicable award and any agreement before it is issued.
AI may
- Fill the role-based contact table from the employer’s position descriptions, rosters and on-call arrangements
- Extract the right to disconnect and on-call clauses from the applicable awards and agreements for the lawyer to compare
- Draft plain-language manager guidance and examples from the approved policy
AI must not
- Must not state that employees must respond outside working hours except where the contact is required by law or the refusal would be unreasonable under s 333M
- Must not schedule automated or AI-generated messages to employees outside working hours in a way that implies a response is expected
- Must not decide whether a particular refusal is unreasonable
The lawyer checks
- The policy reflects the s 333M(3) factors and does not override the right to refuse unless the refusal is unreasonable
- Each applicable award’s right to disconnect clause and any more favourable enterprise agreement term is reflected
- Compensation for availability (allowances, on-call pay, salary set-off arrangements) is accurately described for each role
- The policy says plainly that employees will not suffer adverse action for exercising the right
Method: how the Green, Yellow and Red levels are decided. This is guidance for planning, not legal advice.
Read the full text
The full text is for signed-in accounts. It is free. When you sign in you can:
- read the whole precedent, with its drafting notes beside it;
- copy it, or download it as a Word file or Markdown;
- add it to your firm’s knowledge base, so colleagues can find it;
- let the AI tools you connect read it from that knowledge base.
The summary, the law it rests on and the AI-use guidance above stay public. Privacy.
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