For many small businesses, after-hours contact has never been formalised. It has simply evolved as we’ve found new ways of working and had the tools to do so.
A quick text from a manager. A late email from the owner. A weekend message because someone happened to remember something important. In small teams, this kind of communication can feel normal, even necessary. Everyone is close to the work, roles are often broad, and business needs do not always fit neatly inside standard hours.
But with the right to disconnect now applying to small business employers, informal expectations around availability need more attention.
This does not mean employees can never be contacted outside work hours, that urgent business needs disappear or that every after-hours email is automatically unreasonable.
What it does mean is that employers need to be clearer about when contact is genuinely required, when it can wait, and how employees are expected to respond outside their usual working hours.
For SMEs, this is less about creating another policy for the sake of compliance and more about removing ambiguity.
The challenge for many small businesses is that availability often becomes assumed rather than agreed. A manager sends a message at 7pm and may not expect a response, but the employee feels pressure to reply. A business owner works late and sends emails when it suits them, without realising the team interprets this as an expectation to stay switched on. A part-time employee receives messages on non-working days and starts checking in ‘just in case’.
Over time, these small patterns can create bigger risks.
Employees may feel unable to properly disconnect. Boundaries become unclear. Workload pressure becomes harder to see. Resentment can build quietly, especially where expectations differ between roles, teams or managers.
This is where the right to disconnect overlaps with broader workplace health and safety obligations. After-hours contact becomes not only an employment relations issue, but also can contribute to fatigue, stress, burnout and psychosocial risk.
That makes it important for employers to take a practical, business-specific approach.
The first step is to understand where after-hours contact is already happening. Is it occasional and genuinely urgent, or has it become a normal part of how the business operates? Are employees being contacted because of customer needs, poor planning, unclear roles, understaffing or simply habit? Are some managers more likely than others to contact staff outside hours?
These are useful questions because they shift the conversation away from blame and towards work design.
In many SMEs, after-hours communication is not caused by bad intent. It often happens because the business has grown faster than its systems. Decision-making still relies on a few key people. Processes live in people’s heads. Roles overlap. Customers expect quick answers. Technology makes it easy to reach people instantly, even when the matter is not urgent.
The risk is that convenience becomes culture.
A practical right to disconnect approach should make expectations visible. Employees should understand whether they are expected to monitor messages outside work hours, what counts as urgent, which channels should be used in an emergency, and whether any role genuinely requires out-of-hours availability.
Managers also need guidance. They should know when contact is appropriate, how to avoid creating unintended pressure, and how to use tools such as scheduled send, handover notes or escalation processes instead of relying on immediate responses.
For business owners, this may also require a mindset shift. Just because someone can be contacted does not mean they should be. And just because a leader chooses to work flexibly outside standard hours does not mean the team should feel expected to do the same.
The goal is not silence. It is clarity.
There will always be roles, industries and situations where after-hours contact is reasonable. Some employees are paid to be on call. Some businesses have urgent operational needs, and some customer or safety matters cannot wait until the next day.
But where that is the case, the expectation should be clear, lawful and properly managed. Employees should understand what is required, how often it may happen, how they will be compensated where relevant, and what support is in place to prevent unreasonable pressure.
For many SMEs, the right to disconnect is a timely prompt to review broader people practices. Employment contracts, position descriptions, flexible work arrangements, communication norms, manager training and WHS risk management may all need to align.
A simple policy can help, but the real work sits in day-to-day behaviour.
If employees are told they can disconnect but managers continue to send late-night messages expecting fast replies, the policy will not carry much weight. If part-time employees are regularly contacted on their non-working days, the arrangement is not truly being respected. If workload is so high that people feel they must stay connected to keep up, the issue is bigger than after-hours communication.
This is why SMEs should avoid treating the right to disconnect as a standalone compliance update. It is better understood as part of a healthier operating rhythm.
Clear expectations protect employees, but they also protect the business. They reduce misunderstandings, support manager consistency and help prevent small issues becoming formal complaints. They also give owners and leaders a chance to look at whether work is flowing through the business in a sustainable way.
Because when expectations are left unsaid, employees often fill in the gaps themselves. And in busy workplaces, they will often assume the safest answer is to stay available.
That is not sustainable for people, and it is not a strong foundation for growth.
For SMEs, now is the time to make after-hours communication clearer, fairer and more consistent — before informal habits become workplace risks.