The amendments to the ESA do not eliminate the ability for employers to maintain flexible work arrangements. There are multiple ways to be legally compliant with the new requirement to have a disconnecting from work policy while maintaining remote work, flexible work arrangements and with work being done across multiple time zones.
Terms can be added into your policy to manage conflicting work schedules between employees / managers who still need to communicate in order to get the job done.
For example, you can create tiers for the types of communications that require a responses those that do not based on a particular job's requirements. Communications dealing with the following subject matters need not be addressed by an employee during a blackout period: Administrative matters include anything relating to: expense reimbursement, billing, pay, scheduling time off, etc.