Employers have until June 2 to draft disconnect policies, and experts say most will focus on email. This former lawyer, forced out of her career by overwhelming demands, says real change needs to come from the top.

Andrea Sheasby was about to make partner.

She was also spending late nights at the office wondering if her baby girl missed her at bedtime.

She was drowning in work. “The tap was gushing and I couldn’t turn it off.”

But she knew better than to step away.

“The emphasis was very much, ‘You must be available at all times for everything and you must never say no,’ ” she said. “The faster you do things for people and the more responsive you are, the faster you move up the food chain.”

Last year, Sheasby, who now lives in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley, quit law altogether.

She had already left the large national firm where she started her career, but joining a smaller practice hadn’t helped, and she ended up in hospital after a serious mental health crisis. Sheasby is now healing at home, parenting and spending time on passions like art.

“I would have had a great career and I intended to have a great career,” she said. But the work conditions made it impossible.

Over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has hastened the transition to hybrid and remote work for millions of professionals and office workers around the globe, contributing to increased burnout and resignations.

Stories like Sheasby’s have prompted calls for employers and governments to do something —...

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