Right to Switch Off: What It Means for Overtime and Pay in 2026/27

What the Right to Switch Off Actually Proposes

The "right to switch off," discussed alongside the wider Employment Rights Bill reform programme, is modelled on similar rules already operating in France and Ireland. Rather than a hard legal ban on employers contacting staff outside working hours, the UK version is expected to work through a statutory Code of Practice — a set of standards that employment tribunals can take into account when deciding related claims, giving it real teeth without creating a brand-new standalone cause of action purely for being emailed at 8pm.

For many employees, the practical question isn't really about the principle — it's about pay. If a switch-off culture takes hold and out-of-hours contact genuinely stops, does that change take-home pay at all? And if genuine after-hours work still happens for operational reasons, does it finally get compensated properly?

Unpaid Overtime and the Minimum Wage Floor

Here's the legal backstop that already exists, switch-off policy or not: unpaid overtime is generally lawful in the UK, but only as long as your effective hourly rate — total pay divided by total hours actually worked — doesn't fall below the National Living Wage of £12.71/hour for workers 21 and over from 1 April 2026 (up from £12.21 in 2025/26).

Worked Example 1: Checking Your Effective Rate

Leila is contracted for 37.5 hours a week at £30,000 a year, working out to roughly £15.38/hour on her contracted hours (£30,000 ÷ 52 ÷ 37.5). But she regularly answers emails and takes calls for an unpaid extra 6 hours a week outside her contracted hours, spread across evenings.

Her effective hourly rate across her real 43.5-hour week becomes: £30,000 ÷ 52 = £576.92/week, divided by 43.5 hours = £13.26/hour. This still clears the £12.71 National Living Wage floor, but the margin is thinner than her headline contracted rate suggests — and if the unpaid hours crept up further, she could tip below the legal minimum. Check your own numbers with

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Worked Example 2: A Case That Breaches the Floor

Contrast this with Marcus, on a lower salary of £24,000 a year for 37.5 contracted hours — around £12.31/hour on paper. He regularly puts in an unpaid extra 8 hours a week responding to messages after hours.

His effective rate becomes £24,000 ÷ 52 = £461.54/week, divided across a real 45.5-hour week = £10.14/hour — clearly below the £12.71 National Living Wage. This is not simply a matter of workplace culture; it's a potential National Minimum Wage compliance breach that Marcus could raise formally, switch-off policy aside.

TOIL vs Overtime Pay: How Each Is Treated

If a formal switch-off or after-hours policy leads your employer to start compensating genuine extra hours, it will usually be through either paid overtime or Time Off In Lieu (TOIL).

Worked Example 3: TOIL vs Cash Overtime

Consider Aiden, on £600/week for 40 contracted hours (£15/hour), who works an extra 4 unpaid-in-cash hours one week responding to urgent client messages, and his employer offers a choice: cash overtime at time-and-a-half, or TOIL.

Cash overtime: 4 hours × £15 × 1.5 = £90 extra gross pay, taxed at his marginal rate — for a basic-rate taxpayer, roughly £64.80 net after 20% tax and 8% NI.

TOIL at time-and-a-half: he banks 6 hours of paid leave (4 × 1.5) to take later, valued at his normal daily rate when taken — no extra tax event at the point of accrual, since it's simply future paid leave rather than additional taxable income now.

Neither option is inherently "better" financially — TOIL defers the benefit as time rather than cash, while overtime pays now but is taxed immediately. The right choice depends on whether Aiden needs the cash or the time off more urgently.

What to Do If You're Affected

If your workplace introduces a right-to-switch-off policy, check what it actually promises: does it commit to stopping out-of-hours contact altogether, or does it formalise a paid on-call/overtime structure for genuine operational need? Keep a simple log of any out-of-hours contact and time spent, so you can calculate your real effective hourly rate periodically using

— this is the clearest way to spot whether informal extra hours are quietly eroding your pay below the legal floor.

Bottom Line

The right to switch off is aimed at culture and expectations more than at creating a new standalone pay right. But it sits alongside long-standing minimum wage protections that already require your effective hourly rate — including unpaid extra hours — to stay at or above £12.71/hour for over-21s from April 2026. Whether or not a formal policy lands at your workplace, it's worth periodically checking your own numbers against that floor.