Portugal’s boss text ban

Nov 16

A government sets boundaries | 4-min read

I absolutely loved the news out of Portugal this week, where I know at least one of my cherished subscribers resides.

To summarize, the Portuguese government passed a series of laws designed to protect employees from the scope creep of remote work. Included were the following measures:

It is now illegal for bosses to text their employees after working hours
Employers must contribute to employees’ work-from-home expenses, like electricity and internet bills
Parents with children under the age of 8 are allowed to work from home indefinitely and no longer need to seek prior approval from their bosses to do so
Employers cannot monitor their workers while they are at home (more on that below)

At the risk of sounding like someone we’d all rather forget, this is huge.

Because this story was curiously absent from most major US news sources and because I think it’s incredibly relevant for employees everywhere, I’m serving you my 2 cents (or my $7.25 – the federal minimum wage) on why you should care about it.

1: It acknowledges the risks of remote work

Although there are massive benefits to remote working, I think we’ve been too quick to glorify it. It’s not all pajama pants and unicorns.

We already know that the shift to remote work has increased overall working hours, has further blurred the lines between work and home life, and has pushed us into an “always-on” existence. As liberating as it’s felt to swap polyester slim-fits for drawstring joggers, many workers overcompensate for these new freedoms by grinding to degrees that psychologists and researchers are only just now starting to quantify.

We also know remote working has not been a cure-all for systemic issues like gender and race inequity that have long plagued the office. Studies show that Zoom has a disproportionately negative impact on women, that rates of anxiety and depression have increased for the female workforce much more than for males, and women are exiting the labor market in record numbers.

If going hybrid were the antidote to our workplace problems, the stats would look very different.

Portugal’s measures are an important acknowledgment that remote working has introduced new risks to the workplace – wherever that may be.

2: The need for regulation

Alongside this, the new laws recognize the need for regulation. The rise of remote working arguably creates the need for more boundaries than we had before when our commutes offered some physical buffer. We know from, well, life, that these boundaries are incredibly hard to institute and enforce ourselves, and expecting our employers to impose limits or teach us how to tell them “no” is naive.

In the absence of public policies like Portugal’s, we risk letting companies decide what the future of work will be; the “new normal” we are prognosticating will be designed around our employer’s best interest, not our own.

Consider all the ways companies are now monitoring the activity of their remote workforce. Technology platforms allow employers to track how often we type, when we log on and off, what websites we visit, and how much time we spend on collaboration tools like chat or Slack. Even more worrying, they can access data collected from our laptop microphones and cameras. A reported 60% of large companies (those with more than a few thousand workers) currently use such tracking software.

At present, employee privacy protection against these kinds of measures is woefully absent. This level of tracking is not just an invasion of privacy; it instills a culture of mistrust, micromanagement, and surveillance that undermines the value of the workforce. Ironically, we have grown to equate flex work with increased autonomy, but the latest trends are taking us elsewhere.

3: Redefining a competitive labor market

My last point is more of an open-ended question for us to ponder together.

One of the aims behind Portugal’s new laws is to attract the expanding economic force we affectionately call “digital nomads.”

Whether this works or not, it raises an interesting question around the globalization of remote work. I would love to imagine a world where countries are competing for “talent” not just through high salaries and dynamic job creation but through the promise of a healthy, happy, legally protected work-life balance.

Even the majority of us who can’t be entirely digitally nomadic would benefit from that competition because it puts pressure on companies and governments to protect and promote favorable work environments.

What I really like

Ultimately, I like the Portuguese news story because it elevates the conversation about work to its rightful place on a large, public stage. It recognizes the future of work as a question worthy of political, social, and economic debate. Most critically, it acknowledges that the actions we take to shape work today will affect us collectively and personally for generations to come.