New labour laws in France protect workers from responding to emails after 6pm, and a trial in Sweden is reducing work hours to just 30 hours a week. Do these initiatives sound like a good idea to you? Or what changes could help improve your work-life balance?

New labour laws in France now protect some workers in the digital and consultancy sectors - including the French offices of Google, Facebook, Deloitte and PwC - from having to respond to work emails outside of workign hours.

Companies must ensure that their employees come under no pressure to look at work-related emails or documents on their tablets or computers to ensure they receive the full minimum rest periods already mandated in employment regulations.



France's labour laws saw Apple fined for making staff in France work nights last year, as the law forbids shifts between 9pm and 6am unless the work plays an important role in the economy or is socially useful. Its 35-hour week, introduced in 1999, has come under threat from the increasingly widespread use of smartphones.

Chairman of the General Confederation of Managers, Michel de la Force, said: "We must also measure digital working time. We can admit extra work in exceptional circumstances but we must always come back to what is normal, which is to unplug, to stop being permanently at work."

A Swedish city council announced this week that it's trialling six-hour workdays with full pay for its staff in Gothenburg. The experiment is based on the theory that after six hours, employees become tired and productivity is reduced.

Deputy mayor Mats Pilhem told the Swedish edition of The Local that a six-hour workday produced positive results at a car factory in the city, and he hopes that the trial will reduce inefficiency and create more jobs.

The left-wing Social Democrat and Green parties' initiative has been called a "dishonest and populist ploy" by the Gothenburg council’s main opposition – the Moderate party - ahead of local elections this year.

Full time workers in Austria and Greece work an average of 43.7 hours per week, the longest in Europe, with workers in the UK spending 42.7 hours a week at the office according to ONS figures from 2011.

What's work-life balance like in your country? Does your industry require you to work outside office hours, or do you switch your phone off and hope for the best? Are you benefiting from the new rules in France and Sweden? Or will the law change hinder your ability to communicate with your colleagues effectively? What initiatives would make the biggest improvement to your life?



Let us know what it's like for you by commenting in the thread below

• This article was amended on 12 April 2014. An earlier version stated that the labour deal would require staff "to switch off their phones after 6pm". The deal obliges staff to "disconnect" from work calls and emails after working hours to ensure they receive the full minimum rest periods already mandated in French employment regulations but there is no particular time at which they are required to do so.

