Opinion: Could these laws fix America’s broken work culture?

Editor’s Note: Brigid Schulte is a journalist and author. Her newest book “Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life,” will be published by Holt in September. She serves as director of the Better Life Lab at New America. The views expressed in this article are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

New “right to disconnect” efforts in California and around the globe, to give workers the prerogative to ignore work messages after hours, are aimed at reducing the stress and burnout of our always-on and hyperconnected modern work culture.

In an environment that has become increasingly demanding, technology has enabled late-night emails from the boss, texts and pings from co-workers at all hours, and made work ever-present in our lives. That techno overload, invasion into our personal time and constant connectivity leave the brain and body unable to disconnect and rest, leading to “technostress.”

Technostress is a very real and pervasive problem, Ashley Nixon, a professor of organizational behavior who specializes in technostress, told me. The expectation that the “ideal” workers will be always available for work at all hours comes at a high cost to human health, wellbeing and work productivity. And the presumption that front line, shift and retail workers must be “on call” or risk losing their jobs is a source of intense misery. We even think so much about work that researchers have dubbed the phenomenon “work-related rumination.”

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