Before it all goes boom!
One of the issues organisations have resolved during lockdown is that working from home is doable and some of the previously expected concerns have proved to be far less of an issue. Yet managing hybrid working can still be a bit of a minefield despite the proven benefits.
Hybrid Working – The Benefits
(because it’s worth remembering why it’s worth the hassle!)
- Flexibility and agility – both in working arrangements and hours of work.
- Improved employee retention. The flexibility of hybrid working can help meet childcare needs, reduce commutes, and fit work to allow for a personal life. Increased levels of trust mean an increase in loyalty and commitment.
- Attracting new talent – research demonstrates hybrid working is now a draw to the younger generation and those who have seen the benefits. Continuing to offer this is a bonus.
- Increased productivity – the surprising results of studies into COVID lockdown suggest that working from home increased productivity. Saved time on the commute has often allowed for continuing the working day to when is suitable and convenient. Discretionary hours worked have even been longer as a result.
- Increased motivation – Employees feel more trusted and empowered to manage their workload.
- Improved staff health and wellbeing – Time savings led to health benefits such as extra sleep, more time with family, more regular exercise, preparing home-cooked meals and better work/life balance.
- Financial benefits – savings for employers on office space, office supplies, utility bills and other facilities.
- Convenience – It is easier to do virtual training, customer contact, have meetings and other events without the inconvenience of travel. Geographically it is easier to reach others too.
- Technology makes it easier – there are now many tools and platforms to enable work-sharing, project planning and time management for hybrid working.
- Less sickness absence – several studies have demonstrated that working from home has boosted people’s immune systems due to decreased stress and burnout. Plus, there is less opportunity to spread infection in crowded and poorly ventilated workspaces or public transport.
And Finally
- Increased Accessibility – research has proved that lockdown has hugely increased the amount of people with disabilities who have been enabled to work in ways which accommodate their needs and validate the value of their input. This is something which is vital to recognising the hidden value and talent in those who have previously been disadvantaged due to outdated ideas of what going to work looks like.
How do you navigate the minefield of hybrid working?
Honestly it can seem very daunting, so to start, employers need to refer to revised government guidance on working safely during Covid-19, published alongside lifting Covid restrictions six months ago. This outlines the continued legal duty to manage health risks for those returning to workplaces and those working from home.
Then there are a few other legislative considerations:
Self isolating – rule change after 16 August
1. Fully vaccinated employees (14 days post jab) do not have to self-isolate when told they have been in close contact with a person who has Covid-19 by NHS test and trace. This applies to under-18s, participants in clinical trials of vaccines in the UK, and those with clinical reasons for not having a vaccine.
2. People will still receive a contact call to advise them to take a PCR test and follow measures to prevent the spread of the virus; limiting close contact with people outside their household, wearing a face-covering in enclosed spaces and taking part in regular lateral flow testing. They need to follow this advice up to 10 full days after their most recent contact with the Covid positive person.
3. Anyone testing positive following a PCR test will still legally need to self-isolate, irrespective of vaccination status. Moreover, anyone developing Covid symptoms should self-isolate, take a PCR test (and remain isolated until the results come back).
It is best to decide on pay arrangements and expectations for those who have not been vaccinated in advance.
Hybrid working and health and safety
1. Employers have to take reasonable steps to ensure their employees’ health, safety, and welfare. This includes; providing and maintaining safe systems of work, safeguarding mental health and wellbeing and carrying out risk assessments to measure and document action.
2. This duty of care also applies to those working from home. This will require employers to help employees assess and adapt their workspace, by asking them to undertake a home-working risk assessment. The risks of using DSE can be also regulated through self-assessment at home.
Hybrid working and the risks
Risks might include feelings of isolation, a lack of supervision, physical issues arising from prolonged use of display screen equipment, working long hours, inadequate breaks from work or inadequate or unsuitable office furniture and equipment.
To avoid this, employers can
- Provide guidance and information to employees to help them review their working environment.
- Put in place mechanisms to enable employees to raise any specific health and safety concerns
- Ensure adequate supervision of junior or less experienced staff members, including new inductees who may struggle to feel integrated.
- Keep in touch with lone workers and ensuring regular contact so that they are not disadvantaged.
- Establish clear expectations on both sides concerning communications, working hours, availability etc.
- Ensure employees have avenues to report mental wellbeing issues and schedule regular check-ins with homeworkers. There may be increased (or different) levels of stress caused by home-working.
- Provide support to enable a home workplace to be adapted for effective and safe working (see below).
Resources
ACAS guidance on working from home here.
ACAS guidance on spotting and handling mental health in the context of home-working and furlough.
The HSE checklist on managing Display Screen Equipment
Hybrid working – equipment and other expenses
It is not a legal requirement for an employer to provide equipment necessary for home-working. However, many did during lockdown by supplying suitable IT and furniture and even equipment from offices.
Nevertheless, if a risk assessment has identified an employee at risk, employers need to provide equipment to address health and safety concerns. Moreover, disabled employees should receive auxiliary aids as a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act 2020. This is whether they work from home or in the office.
Both employers and employees should also review insurance policies to cover work equipment used at home .
NB a temporary exemption allows employers to reimburse home office equipment free of income tax and NIC until 5 April 2022 (as long as the property remains that of the employer and there is no significant private use of it.)
Resources
HRMC Guidance here.
HMRC – tax relief for employees working at home
https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home
Other expenses
It is worth reviewing expense policies for employees working from home who use their private phones, heating, lighting and broadband. Employers do not have to legally reimburse employees for these. However, they can argue that employees save on other costs, such as commuting, parking, food, and clothing. It is better to state your policy and agree terms before formalising a working arrangement.
Hybrid working – GDPR and confidentiality
All the standard duties to protect client and employer confidentiality apply for home working.
Employers should set out employee responsibility in a hybrid working policy and ensure that employees can protect information. For example, employers need to ensure device and software security and choose a secure platform.
Resources
Information Commissioner guidance; the data protection aspects of working from home.
Hybrid working and managing employees
Recent research has shown that many managers find it hard to adapt to the hybrid working of their teams. This can be for a variety of reasons. It is more difficult to monitor productivity, measure the quality of output and know what is happening with projects. Managers can feel a loss of influence and even are unsure what hybrid working supervision should look like.
As well doing all their own work, they need to ensure that individuals are working proportionately. Then they are also responsible for asking after the mental health and wellbeing of their team. Plus they need to keep track of who is coming in and when to the office.
So new technology can really help. There are now many tools and platforms to enable work-sharing, project planning and time management for hybrid working. Monday.com, WorkZone, Asana or Smartsheet, Workday and SAP SuccessFactors are all platforms which streamline processes and cut back on paperwork. However, it is worth remembering that the level of monitoring needs to be proportionate and reasonable. The rebirth of the negative-deficit, micro-manager is sadly one of the bi-products of people returning to the workplace more frequently!
What is now being more widely adopted is the idea of outcome-centric workplaces. Communication about task and workload is based on what needs to be done, what individual accountability is being assigned, what follow ups are needed and what resources and time allocation there is. Teams have to agree on a plan that balances the urgency of a task and the reality of its executor’s workload. The wider benefits of this is that performance is measured by output and success, rather than based on more spurious factors eg who is latest in the office or spends most time with senior managers.
Hybrid working – managing the new psychological paradigm
A new working paradigm means that the boundaries between work and life have become increasingly blurry. Managers must make staffing, scheduling, and coordination decisions that take into account employees’ personal circumstances and working patterns. Before managers often dealt with “work” and “non-work” discussions separately. Since Covid, however, many managers have found that previously off-limits topics require discussion; issues like child care, health-risk comfort levels, or family challenges will impact joint decisions about structuring and scheduling hybrid work.
So, without trust, managers might find themselves trying to optimise work with incomplete or even incorrect information.
But it is worth remembering that this is new territory and so starting with honesty will help. The aim is that employees can share aspects of their personal situations relevant to their work. Plus make the right choices for themselves and their families, balanced against the needs of their teams and the organisation.
So creating teams that work well together, are clear about task requirements and jointly own responsibility for outcomes is crucial.
This takes me onto a whole new subject of Prosocial teams; watch this space for more in another blog.
Resources
How to be a high performing leader in a hybrid world – strategies for Managers https://www.ey.com/en_uk/workforce/how-to-be-a-high-performing-leader-in-a-hybrid-worldStrategies for Managers
Hybrid working and employment documentation
The advice is that consultation with your employees over long-term changes to their working practices works best. Moreover, recent surveys by the CIPD and the IWFM clarify that not offering flexible working will lose valued staff. This is vitally important in light of evidence of many people re-thinking their priorities and re-evaluating how work fits into their lives which has led to what has become termed as the “great resignation.”
“The COVID-19 crisis has left a permanent mark on our view of the workplace – and a knee-jerk return to the pre-pandemic status quo risks serious implications for businesses in attracting and nurturing talent. The responsibility now falls on organisations to think about their employee experience beyond the boundaries of their corporate workspace. Effective employers will already be thinking of how to support employees and provide a suitable working environment for them, wherever and however they choose to work.’
Chris Moriarty, Director of Insight at the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management
So if you want to retain valued staff and firm-up working arrangements, you will want to
- Formalise arrangements for a permanent change to working arrangements.
- Clarify that the employee works from home regularly, ensuring that the employee can claim tax and NIC exemptions and reliefs.
- Establish work patterns and access arrangements. For example; the number of days worked from home, the registered place of work, requirements to attend the office, travel expense arrangements, sickness notification procedures etc.
You can retain flexibility to alter an agreement temporarily or to make home-working conditional on, say, maintaining performance.
Resources
The great resignation is a trend that began before Covid
Reasonable requests
If employers require a return to their place of work full-time, employees are entitled to make flexible working requests. Recent case law demonstrates that turning down an application on the basis of business needs alone is harder to defend; given the evidence of lockdown that it has been possible to do so.
Some employers have also received requests from employees to work overseas or from different parts of the country. Legally this is possible, but there are tax, social security, immigration, and employment implications – see article below.
Resources
HMRC Guidance for paying employees working from abroad https://www.gov.uk/guidance/paying-employees-working-abroad
FT The Pitfalls of “working from anywhere.” https://www.ft.com/content/8d3685d5-2fe5-4351-bacb-99cf153defda
ACAS has also published new advice on hybrid working.
Hybrid working and employee benefits
Employees have benefits specific to their office location eg season ticket loans, subsidised or on-site childcare, gym membership, food. Many of these benefits may no longer be appropriate or used when working from home. It is worth considering different ways to reward and incentivise employees. Research demonstrates that a powerful one is employers’ willingness to allow the continuation of new working arrangements!
Hybrid working and discrimination
Homeworking may have its advantages for many. However, it is also possible that it may have the effect of disadvantaging certain groups. So if there is poor access to the internet, shared or cramped accommodation, disability, caring responsibilities, financial issues or other individual circumstances, these need to be considered. Diversity and inclusion policies also extend to home-working. So employers need to take reasonable steps to remove potential discrimination or harm caused by a blanket hybrid policy.
It is essential to be aware of any protected characteristics or health changes that may impact working from home. A risk assessment should include questions to address this. It should also consider accommodations and reasonable adjustments for employees with a disability. Finally, a culture where employees who work from home are overlooked or sidelined is damaging. Employers should be aware of the potential for discrimination and bias.
If you need further advice, help with writing a hybrid policy or risk assessments, please feel free to make contact. https://www.karinbrawnhr.co.uk/contact/ or check out this really helpful infographic https://infogram.com/1pp2vk7520961yhr6xpnljp115szm222rdn