mailingLeitner Slovenia 07/2024

Obligation for employers to regulate and provide employees with the right to disconnect – deadline 16 November 2024!

The latest amendment to the Slovenian Employment Relations Act (ERA-1 or “the Act”) from 16 November 2023 legally recognizes the right of all employees in the Republic of Slovenia to disconnect.

The right is regulated in the new Article 142.a of the Act, which stipulates that the employer must provide employees the right to disconnect, which ensures that an employee does not have to be at the employer’s disposal while exercising his  right to rest or during justified absences from work, in accordance with the law and the collective agreement or general act of the employer. To this end, the employer must take appropriate measures.

The measures shall be determined either in the collective agreement or in an appropriate internal act of the employer. Employees must be informed about the measures taken in the employer’s usual way.

The law does not specify the content of the measures to be taken. Practices vary across the EU, as do the measures, due to differences in each workplace. Available are soft approaches (e.g., awareness-raising policies on the importance of disconnecting from work, clear definition of working hours with clear instructions that the employee is not available to the employer outside working hours, avoidance of out-of-hours communications etc.) as well as hard approaches (e.g., technically disabled work-related communication within a certain time range).

Accordingly, it is left to employers to find appropriate and effective ways to ensure the employee’s right to disconnect, to enforce it and, in case of disputes, to prove that the right has actually been provided. At LeitnerLeitner d.o.o., we are happy to help in this regard.

The statutory deadline for taking the measures imposed to ensure the right to disconnect is 16 November 2024. Violators of this obligation are liable to fines ranging from EUR 1,500 and EUR 4,000.