What if you want to work from home but your employer doesn’t agree?

The return to the office is happening, but it is all still in a bit of a limbo. Labour shortages in some sectors remain a big factor, meaning managers are treading carefully for fear of losing key staff. Employees, used to the flexibility offered by remote work during Covid-19, are often loath to return to the office routine. The five-day, nine-to-five, office routine will never come back, but some big questions remain.

1. Working out the future

What if you want to continue to work remotely, but your employer wants you back in the office? The legal position relies on your work contract, but normally this specifies the office as your place of work. So if your employer wants to insist that you show up, they can. For now, many are adopting what Jennifer Cashman, employment law partner at RDJ solicitors, describes as a “softly-softly” approach. This is driven in large part by labour shortages in many sectors and the fear that if employees do not get what they want, they will simply walk out the door. So far, according to recruiters, shortages remain in many sectors, even though the hiring market has slowed in some areas and there have been lay-offs in some areas, notably tech. For now, despite this, holding on to and attracting staff is a key challenge and this is driving employer flexibility in relation to working arrangements.

Meanwhile, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar is finalising legislation which will give employees a right to ask for remote working. Consultation on the outline — or so-called heads of the Bill — met objections, partly because it gave employers 13 reasons to refuse such a request. In pre-legislative scrutiny, the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise recommended that the proposals be recast, giving employers fewer reasons to refuse. This would tilt the balance more towards employees seeking such flexible arrangements and build in a code of conduct drawn up by the Workplace Relations commission. Varadkar said at the committee earlier this month that the final proposed Bill, due shortly “departs quite far” from its original outline. Waiting to see what these rules contain is another reason why some employers are holding off on finalising their plans — while others will fear that what they have already put in place may need to be adjusted in the light of new rules.

2. Hybrid versus remote

A key message from many employers, Cashman says, is that the future is hybrid working — a mix of in and out of the office — and that this is different from remote working during Covid, when most staff worked at home all the time for the shutdown periods. Numerous surveys both in Ireland and internationally show that hybrid working is the favoured route for a majority of employers. A key issue in the new Irish legislation will be whether it extends beyond remote working to also encompass hybrid working and other flexible working practices, codifying employee right in these areas — the Oireachtas committee recommended that this should happen.

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Finding a happy medium is not easy. A recent survey of 700 European companies by employment law firm Littler found that nearly four out of ten firms offered hybrid working, but three out of ten required employees to attend the office full time. Interestingly, nearly 80 per cent of those who do not currently oblige people to be in the office full time said they were considering increasing the obligation to attend the office. Illustrating the dilemmas, however, most also recognised the important of flexibility and even remote working to attract and retain staff. According to the Littler survey, companies are walking a fine line here.

In general, companies feel employees have been productive working remotely through Covid — and hence they are open to hybrid working. The usual reasons for wanting staff in the office at least some of the time relate to teamwork, collaboration and company culture. Finding the balance is the challenge.

3. What do employees really want?

Cashman points out that in many cases the key issue for employees is flexibility in their working day — for example to collect children from school, schedule exercise, shop or undertake other household tasks. The assumption is that the employee still works the allotted hours — just over a longer time period — for example by working in the early morning or the evening. This kind of flexibility, Cashman points out, is a separate issue from the place of work, though obviously linked to it given the practices build up over Covid. Communication and discussion between managers and employees is vital to agreeing the parameters as part of a wider hybrid working strategy.

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This concept of a flexible working pattern has been given a name by employment experts: the non-linear working day, This is when employees do not work, say, eight hours in a row with breaks, but spread their work over a longer period to allow time to do other things, Flexibility is a key demand of employees — 64 per cent of 390 employees surveyed by software firm HRLocker had it as a key consideration when changing job, with most looking for the ability to work at least two days a week from home. In a post on Irishtechnews.ie, the company’s chief executive Adam Coleman wrote that people want to “keep picking up their kids from school, attending yoga classes and nipping out for lunch with friends.”

In a blog post as part of RTÉ’s Brainstorm programme, Professor Kevin Murphy of the University of Limerick said that people are likely to be as productive and happier arranging their own working day and while this brought challenges in terms of arranging interactions with colleagues, there was no reason why these could not be overcome. He argued that while businesses wanted teams to meet to boost collaboration, hard evidence of the benefits of this was sparse.

4. A new working world

The Tánaiste said recently that drawing up the remote working legislation was a lot more complicated than anticipated. And company managers say that at a business level the same complexities are emerging — from what obligation to put on employees to return to the office, to what they do when they are there, to handling “wandering workers” who have changed county or even in some cases country. The uncertainty of the Covid situation over the winter is a lingering worry. Everyone agrees that there is no going back to the old nine to five, but no one is yet sure what the new working world will look like.