Work phone and private life: how to separate them when you are self-employed

Mixing the two uses can carry a diffuse cost. A customer call taken during family time can put the person on the defensive; a personal call received in front of a customer can blur the image of your business. When business and private contacts sit in the same address book and the same messaging account, mistakes over who receives what become possible.

Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr, the French government’s cybersecurity assistance and awareness platform, sets out a similar logic for email: do not mix your professional and personal email, so as to avoid mistakes over recipients and information leaks. On the page consulted, the site does not prescribe a separate phone, but the same reasoning can apply to calls: an identified business channel is easier to manage.

Separating does not mean cutting yourself off from the world. It is about deciding when and through which channel you can be reached. A self-employed person may want to stay available in the evening for certain customers, provided it is a choice and not a reflex. Write down your rules: response hours, situations that justify an out-of-hours call, contacts for whom you make an exception.

In France, the Labour Code (Code du travail) provides, in Article L2242-17 (7°), that the negotiation on occupational equality between women and men and on quality of life and working conditions covers in particular the arrangements for the employee’s full exercise of the right to disconnect and for putting in place mechanisms to regulate the use of digital tools, so as to ensure respect for rest and leave periods and for personal and family life. Failing an agreement, the employer draws up a charter, after consulting the social and economic committee (the CSE, the employee representative body). This negotiation is compulsory in companies where one or more union branches of representative trade unions have been set up (Article L2242-1); the detailed content of Article L2242-17 is among the so-called default provisions, which apply where no company agreement organises these negotiations differently (Articles L2242-11 and L2242-13).

This text concerns employees. A self-employed person with no staff is not protected by it, but an owner who employs staff has an interest in not passing their out-of-hours calls on to them. In a judgment of 25 March 2026 (Social Chamber, appeal No. 24-21.098), France’s Court of Cassation, the country’s highest court in civil and employment matters, found no breach of the right to disconnect in a case where the employee had logged on spontaneously, on their own initiative, with nothing to show that they were required to deal with emails immediately. This decision, specific to the facts of the case, does not remove the need to set clear rules on what is expected of employees.

The direct solution is to have a number dedicated to the business. Several forms exist: a second mobile line, a second plan or a SIM card in a compatible phone, a geographic landline number offered by an operator. Compare them on ease of management and clarity for your customers, and check the conditions of each offer with your operator.

On the regulatory side, Arcep, France’s electronic communications regulator, states that mobile numbers starting 06 or 07 are not reserved for private individuals: the new conditions of use require a single natural person to use a given mobile number, from a mobile device on a mobile network, so that business lines attached to natural persons can continue to use a number starting 06 or 07. Arcep adds, however, that the use of mobile numbers for calls made by call centres is not authorised; if you are in doubt about your use, ask your operator.

A call forward scheduled outside your hours, to voicemail or, during their own working hours, to a colleague, spares you from deciding every evening whether to answer. The phone’s “do not disturb” mode, set to time slots, does a comparable job for notifications. A greeting that announces your hours and a realistic callback time lets the caller know what to expect.

Think about the other points of contact: state the same hours on your website, your business listing and your email signature, and direct non-urgent requests to a form or an email address. Avoid giving your personal number for business use: once it is out there, it is hard to withdraw.

Finally, think about the transition: move customer contacts from the personal address book to the business one, tell your customers the new number, update your website, your business listing and your sales documents, and keep the old number forwarding for a transition period.

Separating the lines does not solve everything: you also need a time to call back. Plan one or two fixed slots a day, note requests in a single place and close out each callback (done, to redo, passed on). A written rule, however short, stops the business line from taking its place back in your private sphere.

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