Homeworking long-term

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good afternoon everybody i'm going to kick us off i see more people coming in but we'll start bang on time
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i hope everybody is doing well this afternoon my name is katie jacobs from the cipd
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and welcome to this the next webinar in our cipd coronavirus webinar series
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in today's session we're going to be exploring what homeworking looks like when it is for
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the long term we know that many organizations were forced to go remote pretty much
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overnight back in march but now that government guidance has switched back to work from home of ucan
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many organizations are thinking about what home working looks like when it is less about crisis response
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and more about how we work for good now we know that many people professionals have a lot of questions
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about what that means for things like contracts allowances and reward as well as things like culture performance and development
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and luckily we have a really excellent panel on hand to offer some presentations and to
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discuss this timely and important topic so i'm joined by johnny gifford johnny
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is senior advisor for organizational behaviour at the cipd and he's been leading on cipd research
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projects around remote working and virtual teams we have alan price ceo of bright hr
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which offers hr software and support to smes and alan is our employee relations
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and legal expert on this session and last but not least lee le favor aya vice president of human
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resources at enterprise and she has experience in running remote teams as many
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of enterprises colleagues have been entirely home-based for a number of years now so thank you
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all very much for joining us today as ever i'm just going to do the housekeeping very quickly
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the session is being recorded it will be available to access afterwards as well with slides so you will be able to
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download those we'll make them available either later on today or tomorrow to submit questions and please do can i
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ask you to use the q a tab which you should be able to see at the bottom of your screen please use the q a tab if there's
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anything you want me to ask the panel but do use the chat function to connect with each other and to share and learn
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i can see people talking about the webinar on there which is brilliant if you want to share anything about what your organization is doing or
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any challenges then please do that as well just remember to set it to go to all panelists and all attendees
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if you want to get response from everybody watching remember that the cipd coronavirus hub
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is here for you as a resource and we're adding things to it all the time and this topic is going to be a really big one for us over the coming months
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and last but not least i want to flag our well-being helpline for our members in the uk and ireland
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with award-winning workplace wellbeing provider health assured we are now providing cipd members with
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free help and support via sessions with qualified therapists online or over the phone so that's the
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housekeeping done on to our topic for this afternoon now it's been more than six months
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since the introduction of lockdown measures forced uk businesses to shut their doors and implement widespread homework
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many organizations responded rapidly in crisis mode using quite short-term fixes
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while this initial enforced home working experiment has proven largely successful so we all
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know productivity hasn't fallen off a cliff after all what are the implications for longer term homeworking what is the impact on
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employee mental physical and financial well-being what does it mean for the pay and benefits deal and what support
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should employers be offering their workforce in the short term over the coming colder and darker winter
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months ahead in short is there a blueprint for effective long-term home working i'm sure if
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you've tuned into a lot of these webinars you've got pretty used to seeing my sofa and posted danish chairs after last six
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months i think we've got six more months of that ahead of us so lucky you so that's what we're talking about this
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afternoon um we're going to hear from johnny first johnny's going to set some of the context he's going to talk about some cipd research
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and then alan's going to run us through some of the legal things that we need to know then lee's going to share some of her
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experience and then we're going to move into q a please do get your questions in from the start and we will take as many as we can
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we had some submit in advance so i'll cover those as well don't leave them all until the last 10 minutes uh if you put them in early you're more
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likely to get them answered so that's it for me for now i'm going to hand over to johnny to kick us off
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over to you johnny thanks very much katie i think it's tempting to see change
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wherever you look in a pandemic the sense that after covid nothing's ever going to be
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the same again but of course in many respects i think that we will return to default
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uh pretty much as soon as we can or will be taken over by other challenges like
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coming out of a recession or adapting to brexit don't forget brexit so a question for
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uh how we work is where do we genuinely think there's going to be long-term change
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from the our experiences of the covered pandemic and for my money i think even though
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it's not for everybody an increase in homeworking is the most likely
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long-term change in how we work i think we were primed to do it through
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developments in remote technology so supporting technology had already
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advanced and people were more used to using it so the whole experience was relatively
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frictionless um and along with that it become more socially acceptable
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so the view that working from home is kind of one step away from shirking i think that was less common
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and kovid in a way just just gave us that push to show that it could be
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done more widely how much it will change in practice we don't quite know but we do have
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some ideas so if we look at some of our survey research on the next slide we can see that
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employers this is recent research done over the summer employers see that the proportion of home workers
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could roughly double overall and so you can see that here for both
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uh working from home all the time which is the the pink bars and also people working
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regularly that's a day a week or more on the next slide we can also see that
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employees expectations are changing too so employees have seen that through covid
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just how practical it can be to work from home if you look at the green bar at the top you can see that one in three
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uk workers are likely to request working from home more in the future
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however if you look at the orange bar there it's also noticeable that one in 10 uk workers have been put off
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by the experience of working from home in the lockdown and they're now less likely
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to work from home the other thing that i draw from this graph is that it highlights that flexible
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working is not just about working from home so if we look at the other green bars you can see that there may we may see
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demands increase in other types of flexible working arrangements so in particular flexi time
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and compressed working hours moving on to the next slide um it's
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really important to recognize that if we look at this in the wider context of work life balance and work hours
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this is an area in which the uk is particularly poor at so what you've got here is a list of a
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selection of oecd countries surveyed in 2015 and on that question about work
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family interference uk is near the bottom of the list we know that many of us
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would like to reduce our hours uh typical commute time is sort of getting on for four hours a week six and
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a half hours a week in london we know that this is an area that we're not very good at
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now flexible working is clearly not a panacea it can simply mean that you're juggling
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your time more but it is a key way that we can manage our time to fit our needs and we know from our
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work in the the good work index that we can um there is a big unmet demand in
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flexible working so on the next slide um we have um
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so uh sorry i'm missing my no i'm missing a slide there we know from our work on the good work
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index that about half of us a bit over half of us work flexibly in some way or other
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but two-thirds of us would like to work flexibly in a way that's not currently available so there's clearly more we can
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do in this what this slide shows is that covert 19 has brought about change in a very
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unequal way so far so we can see as you know you'd well
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expect that manual and less skilled jobs are much less likely to be able to be
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working from home through the pandemic and more likely to have been furloughed
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and you can see a similar trend across industries so it's retail and in particular hospitality where you
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see more furloughing less working from home now for many
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people in these situations the number one priority is going to be basic job security that's just a reality
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of you know living in recession but i think it's also worth noting that
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employers in the past have had quite a narrow view of who can work from home who can't work from home
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in the past and what the lockdown has showed is that many people who'd never been given this option
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before can work from home so i think we should challenge ourselves
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employers who challenge themselves to offer flexible working where possible what's the next step
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um on the next slide we need to think about how we can get the best out of
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virtual teams and the following slide what we did in may of this year was we
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conducted evidence review and evidence review summarizing the body
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of research and one of the main findings that we have is that the basic ingredients for
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successfully managing virtual teams are pretty much the same
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as as face-to-face or collocated teams but it's harder to get those factors in
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place so for example especially when we look at knowledge intensive businesses
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which let's face it as many of us it's clear expectations and role clarity
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within teams are even more important in virtual teams than they are
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in face-to-face teams but they're harder to to get so it can mean that it's helpful
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to give a bit more direction over who's going to do what at what point
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but on the other hand social cohesion and trust are more important in virtual
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teams and they're harder to build and it's easy to undermine
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so undermining trust can happen in virtual teams through procedures to monitor
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performance for example this has been seen quite conclusively in research
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equally we see that virtual teams become more reliant on on knowledge sharing but knowledge
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sharing is harder to do when we think about communications communications are often delayed
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people give less information when they're communicating by email and it's harder to interpret messages
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than it is when you're working with people face to face so throughout these areas there's a
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simple message that it takes more effort to manage virtual teams but that extra effort is definitely
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worth it um we should though take a note of encouragement which is that one of the
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great facilitators of managing virtual teams is having rich
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media and communications so what we have now with zoom or ms teams
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or whichever platform you prefer is that we're much better equipped now
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to make uh the shift to virtual teams than we were before even if people need a bit of training in
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how to make the best use of teleconferencing or video conferencing and you know things like home broadband
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can sometimes leave much to be desired because the the upload speeds are not
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symmetrical with download speeds and so on you know we're basically in um a good place
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um there are more considerations and perhaps you can pick up on some of these um in our discussion um things like the
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the knock-on effect of the nature on the nature of the employment relationship pay contracts potentially there's
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an opportunity for us as a society to become less london-centric um
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but i think i'll sum up now uh with the next slide to talk about uh the cipd's
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message so first of all cipd's got three crucial tests for the return to the
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workplace in the current climate we ask is it essential to return to work is it
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safe and is it mutually agreed with workers and we also firmly believe that
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employees should have day one rights to request flexible working as flexible working is something that
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should be the norm rather than the exception and i think with that i will hand back to you
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katie thanks very much for that um johnny and thanks everyone for putting starting to put questions in and
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comments i've seen somebody saying that they decided in january to give up their office and to work from home they did not expect to get a huge push
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in march to speed this up but the office is already gone they've already made that decision i i wonder if we'll see more of that
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i'm going to hand over to alan now alan's going to look at the legal considerations that we've got to think about when we talk about making
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homework it work for the long term over to you alan thanks katie i've got
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10 minutes to give you a whistle-stop tour of the legal context so there's a lot of slides to cover and
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as katie outlined they're going to be available on the website so i'll try and go through this as quickly as i can
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and trying to answer some questions along the way so next slide please so obviously we're
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going to talk about the legal right away from home and you can see from the slide there's a lot of
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considerations which johnny covers really really well so uh next slide please so the legal
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right to work from home i think the best advice the best employee relations aspect that i can
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talk about is the point johnny made a lot of flexible work whilst employees don't have the automatic right
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to work from home some do in terms of what's in the employment contract i would deal with any request to work
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from home in the same way as the cipd are pushing for day one rights so whilst flexible working eligibility
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comes in at 26 weeks the best advice is to deal with any request away from home and
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i saw one of the participants ask that question about the request away from home as a flexible waking request
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because in that context you're looking at both the business and the employees reasons for that request next slide
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please and if you're looking for guides in that area cipd's got some really helpful
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guidance but i'd also call upon you to look at the acas code of practice which deals with the request await
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flexbeat because that's what the future's going to hold for us in terms of working from home now obviously there's a time limit on
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that and there's that 26-week rule we talked about earlier but again there's nothing preventing you as an
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employer from dealing with that from day one there's nothing preventing you from dealing with a request away from home
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as a right of a quest to work flexibly and the certain things the employees should be thinking about in terms of
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changing their working conditions and at the moment most employees are working from home
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maybe not by mutual consent but just because of the guys that's come from government but johnny talks about that mutual
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consent and that trust relationship so it's always good to get any type of agreement in writing
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so we go to the next slide it talks about the procedure so it's
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obviously the employer wants to agree that request to work from home in the long term but it should be mutually agreed ideally
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should be a meeting ideally digitally so we talk about what platforms are available we've got the zoom
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we've got life size we've got microsoft teams we've got skype there's other forms of
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communication you've even got whatsapp calling you've got facetime calling but try and have that virtual
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face-to-face meeting to talk about the request and obviously if you can record that
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meeting confirm the discussion and write him and allow the employee that right to appeal as
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well there's no statute right in these types of meetings to be accompanied
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but the cast code of practice talks about allowing the employees some type of accompaniment it makes it more informal for them and
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then the home place set and you may have a family member available again just
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talk to the employee about that the next slide please
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employees do have the right to refuse flexible working and and there are reasons available for
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refusal and at the end of these slides there's some guidance from employment tribunal
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decisions some employment appeal tribunal decisions that i won't go into now but as johnny said there's very little
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evidence in the skilled and professional roles showing that people can't work from home
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and the slide talks in detail about the reasons you can refuse those requests away from home you are
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going to hear from lee talking about in context how it works for their organization and they'll be
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different for everyone next slide please
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we are starting to see some tribunal claims not just dealing with refusals to be able to work from home
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but that employment relationship breaking down in terms of the situation we find ourselves in and always
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we find ourselves in a simple situation of what was discussed at the time so therefore having these formal meetings are
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important referring back to contemporaneous documentation minutes of a meeting a home working
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arrangement in writing makes it really clear on the expectation from all the parties
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and it makes everyone clear of what's expected of them and why and any concerns that both the employees got
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should be discussed in the application and the decision and more so in that homework and arrangement next
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slide please let's just talk just touch on the homework and agreement
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at the moment most employment contracts in the uk relate to a statement of main terms or
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an employee handbook unemployment contract and it normally states a normal place of work
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and it's normally an office based location but it may refer to a variation across the uk
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a homemaking agreement takes that a step further it either provides a short-term medium or long-term arrangement
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as to what expectation we've got and we should be asking our employees and our colleagues to review and sign that
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so it's very clear a lot of small employees that i speak to and a bit in limbo at the moment you don't necessarily know where this is
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going to end up the employee thinks it's going to be permanent because it's working really well for them the employee thinks it's government guidance so that the place of
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work isn't covered secure so there are little steps we can take to make sure that
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there's an end date or a review date to show about the expectations about a safe place of work at home
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there's obviously loan working to consider there's working time to consider and we're going to cover that a little bit later in these slides
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the next slide please where can i was subject to what happens with brexit or
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transition you the uk cabinet office told me the other day i should be calling it i'm not allowed to call it brexit you'll be telling me so transition
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period so during transition we need to be thinking about opt-out agreement so at the moment employees have the right to agree
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through mutual content and opt that of 48 hours but we need to be thinking about that so
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again if they're working from home there's been a bit of expectation that people feel obliged to work longer hours
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that shouldn't be the case but if they are working out should be agreed and and if you are beyond 48 hours they
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should be looking to sign off that agreement again bearing in mind that may be a changing with the working time
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regulations next slide please i think i've said this in all the slides
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so far keeping records not just for the employees benefit but for the employees benefit
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really concerned at the moment that a lot of employees awaken extra hours they feel obligated the distinction between home and work is
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very much blamed at the moment and i just give you one example a technology that we use is something called blip
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where employees check in and check out it's very much about work-life balance it forces them to check in and check out
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and it does give the employee a record which is important both for the uk and ireland in terms of
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being able to share working time obligations and even in the uk since march we've seen 1.6 million uses of
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that application but it shouldn't be used as a way of monitoring employees is about that checking in and checking
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out and also this challenge of and home-based workers in the professional and skilled roles
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feeling they have to demonstrate what they're doing that's not the case so again it is important to keep
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records of what the homework and arrangement is what the balance is and also what hours
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they're doing next slide please and change in pay i think that was one
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of the questions that was asked at the outset in terms of some employees may have a
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london allowance some employees and may have some support on
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commuting costs and i think again as part of this homework and arrangement it's through mutual consent
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that's a discussion to be had but at the moment you you have no uh legal right to change those terms
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conditions unless the three mutual consent there's been a little bit of talk um
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especially in the sme community that we talked to 30 000 of them that there's opportunity to review
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pay and reward you should be done through consent and that sort of wants from an employee to
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look at costs during code is obviously apparent but those employees entered into that employment
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relationship with a very clear understanding of their total reward package so you need to be careful when looking at that
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and again there may be an imbalance when we do have some employees wishing to return to working
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through technology uh limitations all that issue we talked about earlier about isolation i mean i'm aware today
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partly because of my internet connection and a new home and partly and there's a check-in of those it
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professionals who are in work today so you need to think about that when you look at the total reward balance
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and next slide please i don't like the way monitoring stuff
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from home but it seems to come up so hit it on the head and a lot of small employees use that type of terminology
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you do have the opportunity um to monitor usage and through technology but it should be
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through um consent it should be um very much balanced
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there's a german case uh i think came out yesterday with h m that was very much onerous
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both on monitoring and gdpr obligations they went too far that's quite quite a
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big fine but i think johnny covered it earlier there's also an issue in terms of the employment relationship of our trust
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and it shouldn't be that we don't trust that at home it may just be a case of how we
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perform or report on that performance and it shouldn't be about how many calls or videos they do we
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should already have a performance framework in place and if we don't again embellish that in terms of the homework
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and arrangement next slide please miss conduct from what's never been an issue before
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because everyone's been based on where i can only give you anecdotal small issues uh uh calls going in maybe into
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a later evening where employees have children at home they've done split shifts
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and that needs to have breaks uh half day annually dependence leave on paid leave
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and that may have impacted and i think think of one example where um they've worked and even shifted maybe
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they've had a glass of wine with dinner and there's been a bit of a challenge there and so just reminding employees that the
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home-based environment they need to be a very degree of flexibility but when this becomes a long-term arrangement it's just a normal place
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away and next slide please
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bringing staff took back to wake if that would ever to happen and how to deal with that but again if
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the homemaking relationship is agreed if that flexibility is there it should be discussed
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in the homework and arrangement if there's a need to work from home it should be there and now if there's a place or needs away
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from the office now it should be now it shouldn't be based on government gardens there should be a
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need or one to be discussed now we're not going to talk about those rare occasions where there may be an even
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disciplinary action uh if an employer refuses to return to the office but remember returning to
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the office is the office it's not it's not returning to work they're already at work now next slide please
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so in summary there's some challenges with remote management and there's fair
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procedures when dealing with employees from home and there's an issue about loan working
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check and check out display screen equipment health and safety data protection confidentiality what are
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you discussing what you're monitoring needs to be in the home worker agreement and engagement employee well-being
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we're lucky that as cipd members we have the benefit of the health assured helpline the digital app but what resources are
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you giving to your employees for isolation and mental health is really really important
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and the benefits of that lack of travel is important my commute is uh 10 to 15 hours a week
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you can tell from my accent and that background is in manchester so that is manchester but i
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i live closer to liverpool and work-life balance has massively improved you are getting increased weight canals
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but again you need to check out with that it's probably going too far there's a money saving to the employee that shouldn't need to be repaid to the
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employer and an engagement and productivity for some at home but
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like i think katie for once i might be on time so that was a whistle stop taught us
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back to katie that was a a huge whistle stop tour thank you and you covered so many bases
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there um um lots of questions coming in we're going to address those um shortly also when my colleagues have
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shared the um check-in checkout app that allan mentioned i saw some people are asking about that in the chat um and these slides will be available to
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download so you can digest them at your leisure later including those that we didn't get through um so before we go into q a i'd like to
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invite lee to share some of her experiences at enterprise over to lee
27:54
great thank you katie well for us you know it's like a lot of you um out there you know we had to move a
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lot of employees home really quickly and katie mentioned that we did have a um a heritage or
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a several departments that were home workers and so we've had a strong program of homework in our call
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centers for some time but really for us at enterprise a lot of our employees are customer facing so we
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run around 450 branches it's a retail operation and so we have this really mix of
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administrative employees that have the potential to work from home and then how do we service our customers and how do we how do we bridge all those
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gaps together so at the beginning of march we probably we had a few hundred dedicated home
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workers and probably a couple of hundred more people that were flexible and sometimes they worked
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from the office sometimes they worked from home um and then we had countless
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number of people on what we call an alternative work arrangement they're just minor adjustments to their
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schedule but we really don't document it they work it out with their manager and we we go from there but you know
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clearly in mid-march we had to move um another several hundred employees
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home from our administrative teams really quickly and it's you know we have the same
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challenges that a lot of people you know how do we make sure this team is you know the technology secure
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a lot of people didn't have um they had dedicated pcs at work not laptop technology
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how do we make sure they have proper technology to do their job so really we were going through all of
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all of the same challenges that many people have you know the personal equipment challenge the wi-fi connectivity
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challenge how do we deal with those pieces so immediately we created an interim home
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working team um that was a little bit different or i would say a work from home team not a
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homeworking team we already had that there was that their job was to really address some of these challenges and really to
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bring it together um and they introduced um this concept called the three c's um cooperation
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coordination and communication you can tell health and safety was involved there
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with the three c's but this really helped us create an environment that we were being really collaborative
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about what we were hearing we were surveying our employees to understand their needs and where their challenges
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were we were working really closely with our it department i mean everybody knows everybody wanted
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equipment at the same time and that can be a challenge and then how did we run some of these dse assessments and make sure that
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um we had proper um you know line of sight so to speak there
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so this interim policy was created um but we had our own challenges i mean
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one of the first challenges is you know we had so many different levels of employees the slide that johnny showed you know really demonstrated how that
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works and and everybody had a different maybe challenge there children needing homeschooling well the hours allowed
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parents to do that but was it enough for them um and while this isn't really didn't really come up as part of
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our homework policy one of the best i think initiatives that we implemented were 10
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paid emergency leave days early in the crisis and we allowed
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people that were ill they could use it for coveted illness coveted caretaking or school situations so we could give
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our employees a little assurance there and that helped in that respect but we also had a lot of our young
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employees who are at the bottom of the pecking order in their home um they didn't have an ideal place to
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work so some of our apprentices maybe their their mom their dad their older brother or sister
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you know god first dibs on the wi-fi or the technology and so they found that
31:46
sometimes really difficult in fact some of these um this group of people are like when can we come back to the office
31:53
um and then just the the technology uh we were just i mean we didn't even
31:59
have teams at that time with very few people in our company so we had to really upskill a lot of people really quick
32:05
i was joking in the beginning people didn't turn on their camera for meetings and we were like okay this is virtual now
32:11
let's let's get into the the system so we had some really basic issues we had to address i mean
32:17
um people didn't know they had to leave their computer on at work to remote into their technology so you can just kind of see a
32:24
lot of the same i'm sure challenges in your organization from a mental health
32:31
perspective we needed to make sure that we were reaching out and making sure that people understood
32:36
where they could go and be signposted um for help or for
32:41
advice so that that whole making sure that and re reminding people of their
32:48
benefits was a really important part of that and our our culture really shifted um
32:54
but it goes back to some of the things we've mentioned before the trust we've now moved from a work from home
33:00
policy to we're creating a work from anywhere across border policy now that comes with its
33:05
own challenges tax implications and but but that can just show you how quickly
33:12
people can move that thought process um where people were sometimes reluctant for certain roles or certain departments
33:19
um to work from home and so we really i think moving in the right
33:24
direction and i think that probably we can tell by our employees around
33:29
60 to 65 percent really that are in roles that can work from home do want this hybrid model for the future
33:37
so we've got to really think about how that works as we start bringing people back um because alternatively we had about 20
33:43
percent of people that that really want to be back into the office every day so we really have to build on that
33:49
and um you know it's really for us it's how do we continue to make it a fun
33:55
inclusive environment you know we just had our employee opinion survey and we can tell that we're doing some things
34:01
um well um but we've got to really explore that virtual engagement and we need more we
34:07
need to do more there um and so some of the things that we have done that have been really impactful are some listening sessions
34:14
um and talking about different topical issues that might be going on in the workplace or or in society in general and those have
34:22
proven to be popular but it's definitely an evolution um and it's you know we're on a journey
34:28
so that's just a little whistle-stop tour about what we've been experiencing over the since march thank you very much
34:35
for that lee i'm coming by allen and johnny uh to take yourselves off me and julie everybody everybody off me or i'll be
34:41
saying you're on mute multiple times in the q a um i'm gonna go to to questions and we've had a lot that
34:47
are quite um similar so i'll group them together so quite a few around what is
34:53
the role of employers or what are employers um kind of compelled to do around
34:58
setting people up to work from home so whether that is providing allowances for people to be
35:05
able to buy the equipment to set themselves up to work from home um what that means um around things
35:10
like um claiming back from hmrc um all those all those kind of things as
35:16
we move into working longer term so alan just from a legal perspective what is the duty of care from an employer when it
35:23
comes up comes to setting people up to work from home effectively and safely
35:28
we're getting into health and safety you know rather than employment law so uh it's been a while in terms of
35:35
the health and safety of work obviously the employer has to provide a safe place of work and the home is a safe place of work the
35:41
most practical and simple steps is to ask the employee either with guidance from a health and safety
35:47
professional or hr professional we've got support is the complete two types of assessment
35:52
which are a display screen equipment assessment which is the old adage of where's your screen
35:57
is it safe and obviously they have to provide as the employer and tools to make sure that
36:04
they've got the correct screen they're not working from a laptop and the screen's the right height and then there's also an office based
36:10
for the risk assessment which is the chair the desk and
36:15
a lot of employees in the short term are working from sofas a lot of employees have allowed
36:20
employees to their company chair home like the chair i'm sitting on now and some have provided the contribution
36:26
and i think i saw in one of the chats someone said about a
36:32
notional figure of a hundred pounds or 200 pounds i think a lot of employers are now
36:37
offering that there's more employees that way speaking to we're saying you should be looking to provide the budget the hmrc gives some taxable
36:45
relief to that i'm speaking to your finance teams but i think 100 pounds provide
36:51
the ikea type of basic workstation and i think most employees will need a screen as well as a laptop
36:57
a headset in terms of dsc and like such like i think on the next session if you want
37:02
to let me know i can get one of our health and safety professionals on the call as well to help out thankfully he's got a view there thank
37:09
you very much alan and the figure i hear most excited when i talk to hrd's about this is 250 pounds as we allow
37:15
um lee have you set people up and what about long-term home workers were they given an allowance to set themselves up
37:21
um well our long-term homeworkers um we already had a program and basically when we would hire them
37:27
they came with their equipment and um with with their own devices now we're rethinking everything right
37:34
now because i think it's a good time to just review and make sure that everything's
37:39
still fit for purpose so we haven't um really changed that policy yet but we are looking at different things
37:45
i think the point that that al made about being flexible so we have allowed people to come get their work
37:51
equipment um and take it home or in some cases we've gotten you know that to them uh you know
37:57
a chair for example i think you know everybody has the story of and probably a lot of people on the phone if we're
38:03
really thinking are we sitting in a proper office chair right now you know i'm not sure we could all tick
38:08
that box and so we've really tried to be as flexible and address things right now
38:14
in a really personable way and as we start to evolve back into the workplace and see
38:19
where that's going thank you for making decisions yeah um quite a lot of
38:24
questions and discussion about what needs to be a contractual change versus what is part of a agile working kind of policy johnny any
38:33
thoughts on what needs to or should change long term in terms of kind of contracts and what
38:38
can be done on a kind of trust basis i think i mean you think as alan's already said
38:43
uh in terms of providing an an office environment that's suitable there is a there's a duty of care for employers to
38:50
to make sure that that is the case uh i noticed one one of the comments uh questions coming in
38:55
saying you know what about people who can't work from home and are looking to work in an office which is then closed and i think that's
39:02
a that's a difficult but serious conversation that needs needs to take place so i think you know there could be some
39:10
duty of care there for employers to make allowances for people to come into the office if that's
39:16
if that's what they need so in terms of uh in terms of contracts changing
39:22
and at what point do you need to change a contract if someone's working
39:28
sort of you know half time at home or 80 at home allen may be able to
39:34
advise on that more gen you know more better than me but i think that what's
39:40
what's likely to change over the over the medium or longer term is that the way in which employment
39:45
relationships are set up um is slightly different so that we can see
39:50
um we'll see more jobs which which are home based from the off
39:56
or more jobs which allow for that or require that and
40:03
and i think that that is likely to change all sorts of dynamics of how we work and uh contractual
40:09
relationships i think it is good to get those things in in writing if if you can both from the point of view
40:16
of what the employer's duty of care is and from the point of view of what uh you know where employees
40:24
can or are required to work so i think you know adam made the very
40:30
basic point that get stuff in writing have the conversations from a people management point of view
40:37
it's really important to show that you're supportive to show that you're listening to show that you're working um in
40:44
consultation with employees you're not just saying there's the memo that's that's what you've got to do now it's
40:51
got to be a two-way conversation thanks johnny um alan can i ask you to expand on um what the
40:56
what the legal obligations are there just on another point the cipd website's
41:02
got a really good homework and survey questionnaire which is a good starting position i think one of the other questions about
41:07
what's available on the premium service of hr and form i think and the challenge with the
41:13
employment contract is it's always seen as sort of a backstop insofar as that it's seen as what's the legal
41:19
framework for allowing working from home and and what obligations for pay and um
41:25
is it safe or not but the best conversations are those that are either at the offer of employment or
41:30
when home working takes place so that homework working arrangement about what we're going to provide you
41:36
what what expectations you've got but it's going to be by mutual consent because at the moment a lot of employees are working for me
41:43
the goods will or the employees awaken from god's will so there's um we're starting to get a situation of
41:48
custom and practice which means an employment law that what we've done for so long becomes permanent and therefore employees have
41:55
through custom and practice through a period of time become home workers and that's now their
42:00
normal place of work in the same way that if i wasn't traveling to manchester today and i stayed at home in little for
42:06
the next two years that would become my place of work same with pay same with ours so there's definitely a need
42:12
and a call out to get that homework and arrangement in writing that becomes an addendum an amendment to that statement
42:19
of main terms or that contract of employment thank you alan um lee we had a question
42:25
about how employers are combating the loneliness from colleagues some of the social bonds
42:31
of the workplace are broken can you give any insight into what you've done enterprise to keep people feeling connected well one
42:38
of the um things that we did and i think this with something a little different than
42:44
we had done in the past is um particularly after black lives matter we did some listening sessions
42:50
with our employees so it was really just kind of changing up maybe how we would approach a topic
42:55
and inviting people to call in and have a chat with the md or we've done some different things
43:00
around getting uh webinars or information out at different times on different topics
43:06
and we can kind of through the technology we can do this and invite people to do it more on a
43:12
national basis where before it was probably more regionally based and so people can
43:17
actually hear views from the top or things like that but then we've seen some great examples and these are just
43:23
like um things i'm sure we're all doing pub quizzes you know happy hours um lunches
43:30
um you know uh in the beginning the first week out that every friday meeting one team would have a
43:35
best hat day everybody would wear a hat and they would put it out on twitter and our internal social media
43:42
so we've used that a lot more to kind of leverage what people are doing and sharing you know their accomplishments that way
43:49
but it's it's you know it's and then it's really trying to connect people on projects in a different way um in
43:56
bringing people bringing people in so i think that it's it's really similar to what
44:03
you would do to build build engagement other ways but i think it's really our managers are still trying to figure out how do i do that virtually how do i
44:10
build a relationship with a new employee and have you found any technology or tools particularly useful somebody's
44:16
asked about what's available out there do you know i think if i said you know we were still
44:22
implementing teams um in the beginning so i'm not sure i would be the best person to talk about technology
44:28
um but in all joking aside you know i think one of the things that we did we were also going through
44:35
a new hr system integration and we were still kind of in the implementation phases at the beginning
44:41
and just some little things that we did about where we put things on the landing page to have everybody go
44:46
through that system so everybody knows where different platforms are that that sounds really simple but we
44:54
have people going on to different places and just trying to put everything in you know one central place where they
45:00
can see everything that they can use to make their um workday more useful thank you and johnny
45:07
on that technology point is there anything that you've seen working particularly well um
45:12
and enabling the better virtual teams i think peop helping people get to grips
45:19
with the likes of video conferencing is is just a very basic thing i don't think we should assume
45:24
you know you still have uh people on on video conferences kind of like that um you just sort of see their
45:31
forehead or you can't hear them properly or i think you know just a very basic bit of training on how people can get up
45:38
and running someone the other day suggested to me why don't you uh stick your ethernet
45:43
cable in if your wi-fi's uh connections are not very fast and i thought blimey had not thought of that
45:49
before so i you know stuck in and ethernet cable and lo and behold my internet was working
45:55
more more quickly so i think there's there's various just basic training that we can help
46:01
people with so that they can have better quality interactions it's that base that we need to get as close to
46:08
face-to-face interactions as possible so that's about the quality of uh video
46:13
conferencing i think that it's also important to make sure that that
46:18
there's a kind of level level playing field for want of a better phrase that if you've got some people in the
46:24
office having a face-to-face meeting and you've got some people at home who would be dialing in
46:29
just make everyone dialing in um and if you've got some people who who might not have a webcam then
46:37
you know think about making a telephone call instead so i think trying to have uh
46:43
meetings in which everyone can contribute equally i think is really important too i think that's a really interesting
46:50
point about that kind of digital fluency that we've all assumed that everybody has because we've been doing this for six months but
46:56
just kind of getting people up to speed with with the basics is probably something that a lot of organizations
47:01
can still consider because i'm obviously i'm still seeing a lot of people with only their thoughts
47:07
but but we are in in so much of a better place than we were even just a few years ago
47:13
when when i had my leg in plaster sort of four or five years ago it and it struck me at that point just how well i
47:19
could take part in office life through video conferencing and that hadn't been the case before
47:25
you know we it services who can log on to your computer and with a click of a couple of buttons
47:31
it's we're really well equipped and there is a there's a lot to be gained i think in this
47:37
so lee did you have a point yeah i was just gonna say and somebody i think put this in uh the comments um one of our teams is
47:43
trying a new app called dumb teacup i believe and they've had some really good um
47:48
feedback from it so we may look to do that so there are some really innovative things out there but one thing
47:53
we went to a lot of our partners and we said what can you do for us how can you help us
47:59
take this virtual experience and really make it more
48:05
real firm employee's beneficial and so we had a lot of like for example talking talent our parental coaching uh
48:11
that we we company that we use you know they've helped us take everything virtually and
48:16
so our participation rates have gone up there we had another company that that we used
48:23
that are really helping us with some uh basic you know information about elder care
48:30
self-care you know just really get signposting people to different different points and so your eaps may be
48:36
a really good source too to to help with that virtual experience thank you and alan question for you um from angela
48:44
do you feel there will be many grievances and disputes later this year or perhaps from from spring 21 when there may be a push
48:50
by employers for people to return to the office or workplace if so what's your guidance being prepared and reducing the number of
48:56
potential complaints we saw on the last round of government guidance age of people to go back to
49:03
where there's sort of a disconnect from those who had to remain awake and low skill roles not being sort of
49:09
recognized for that and we saw grievances from those being asked to come back from way for no
49:14
other reason than government guidance when you're working very well at home i think i know i keep on stressing the
49:20
point and again we'll obviously ensure that uh hr and former got some model guidance and again just to
49:26
call out you've all got access to the free gip employment law helpline where you can get more guidance
49:32
much longer and probably quicker than i can give it and but i think the homework and arrangement
49:37
is really important to set the context of the relationship now what's expected from them is there an
49:43
end date on it is it because of technology is it because of the role why do we require them back to work at
49:48
any stage in the future and have those conversations now it's the currency is there now it
49:53
shouldn't be something that's led by government the relationship between the employer and the employee and that
49:59
contract is fluid that's not what's written in stone two years ago when that employee started but it's how that evolves so it's very much
50:06
about grievances from what i've seen over the last 20 years in employee relations because that expectation
50:12
or level playing field doesn't exist the obligations between the parties aren't always clear
50:18
and that fluidity of relationship varies day by day and those check-ins and those relationships and those agreements in
50:24
writing need to stay current and that that should avoid grievances if you do okay
50:29
you can go back to that contemporaneous document email or record where it was discussed and agreed thank
50:36
you i see something i think it needs it needs to come back as well just to that very fundamental point that we need
50:41
to do things which are mutually agreed so for the current environment if you if you know if someone can't work at
50:48
home but you close the office can you find another mutually agreed solution like working in a co-working
50:55
space further down the line is it 80 or 50 working at home mutually agree you know
51:01
have go through these these genuine conversations where you can you can say what the business needs
51:07
are and what people's individual needs are and and find a way that works
51:13
and talking about that kind of balance of home versus office and that blended approach you
51:18
were talking about lee are you thinking that you will have kind of two days in three days out or
51:23
anything kind of set in stone or will it be up to people to decide with your managers well we've been
51:29
consulting with our employees a lot about what they want and what they see for the future and
51:34
we were on well on our journey for a return to work plan and we had even released all of our videos about
51:40
how to come back to the office safely and um but i do think people will want that
51:45
hybrid model and that's why we've gone to this work from anywhere you know let's just really harness you
51:52
know the the um support and the movement and really how do we continue to make
52:00
this a better more flexible workplace like i said a lot of our roles are customer facing
52:06
those are not available to work from home because we need to service our customers but whenever we can whatever opportunity
52:12
we have to make the workplace more flexible for our employees in the productivities there
52:18
why wouldn't we take advantage of it and would you be letting people work from anywhere abroad we've had a few people discussing
52:24
that in the chat well we are putting yes we the policies actually called um
52:29
i've got it right here the crossbow the draft the cross-border policy now there are tax implications this is the
52:36
difficult thing i mean there are clear tax implications and can you work in a nut you know do you
52:42
have the ability there's limited number of days so um there's going to be it's going to be really prescriptive
52:48
there but um you know i think it'll the the concept is
52:54
let's just be as flexible as we can we're here we've come i guess one thing that's that i
53:00
think is a big challenge is i could even start to see this with the um return to work you know certain
53:05
people almost their mindset changing back well we need to be back in an office so i think we just need to make sure that
53:11
we you know really capture this moment and drive it forward and just uh before i
53:18
leave you and go on to somebody else somebody's just put into the q a that they really like the idea of this working from anywhere
53:23
but from a contractual point of view what do you class the work location to be these people we haven't gotten there yet
53:29
like i said this is our this is our policy for the future but i think what we would probably do is
53:34
still class them in there um they would still be dom you know domicile and everything in their class them in their normal corporate or
53:41
administrative office and then do some type of in my mind i'm thinking addendum there
53:47
would be some reporting requirements about where people would need to work and probably a more robust process
53:55
approval with that just so we know where people are um you know and they're not just on holiday for example
54:02
thank you um alan can i ask you to add in on that we've had quite a few comments about this working abroad
54:16
i think the point you made about the tax application there's also a very apparent employment law issue about
54:23
places of work and there's a lot of caseload which talks about pilots for example who sort of travel from a base letter in
54:31
heathrow and work so many days abroad or have stay-over days abroad so there's a
54:36
massive implication of employment legislation of where their your employment jurisdiction is
54:41
not just from a tax point of view but also jurisdiction if you wanted to bring an employment tribunal claim a claim about
54:47
employment rights we're talking about flexible awakening that employee put every question for flexible awakening but spending nine months
54:53
abroad did he even have the legal opportunity to to use uk legislation so there's very much
54:59
uh a challenge there and i don't think it's been well tested other than in that currency well
55:05
previous situation of pilots being abroad and where was their normal place of work not just from a tax perspective but
55:11
in terms of control as well yeah and keep in mind you probably would be limited to how
55:16
many days you could do that per year so it would be a very short window but it does give people back to that
55:23
flexibility piece definitely a lot too a lot to work through there we are running out of time
55:28
just gonna ask a couple more quick ones um obviously we're going into winter it's going to be cold we're all
55:34
going to be well if we are home working now we're going to be sitting in our on in our homes we're going to have to be paying a
55:39
lot more for heating we've got some questions about uh kind of is it an employer's responsibility to pay any more of that
55:45
and how do you deal with if you're getting any requests from employees to some to help them out
55:51
in that space and alan from a from your perspective again you're getting into my health and safety
55:57
legislation from memory but there's no legal minimum on how cold the workplace can be
56:03
just dealing with that practical situation the law the fact who's at which it originally comes from it's about a workplace i think being too
56:10
hot or certainly being too cold i don't think many homes will be in a situation where they'll be
56:16
at that really cold temperature just because we all go home of an even and we don't want our pipes freezing so i think the law talks about health
56:23
and safety regulation about extremities so i think the challenge that employees will face is that we no
56:30
claim that the home workplace is so cold or so warm that the employee's got an obligation
56:35
that it's no longer safe i think there's practical considerations about that allowance and having that allowance to be all
56:41
encompassing it's if it's a regular allowance and if it's a one-off allowance putting that into place but again
56:47
if it was a new working relationship you would be saying to the employee you need to have
56:52
a safe warm and able environment and therefore that situation wouldn't occur so if it is going to become a
56:59
permanent place of work then it's up to the employee to make that requirement it's not the employer
57:04
forcing them to work from home and if the employee wants to continue working from home i think my advice is to have that
57:09
homework and arrangement to say you're making that available in the same way that you require the employee to maybe be
57:15
smart or find a safe way of getting to work the employee's not got an obligation to to provide the um uniform normally or
57:22
the vehicle depending on what the way uh role is thank you and johnny from a people
57:28
management perspective any advice on dealing with um when if you're asked for the
57:33
stuff that you might consider not to be your responsibility to deal with as an employer um
57:40
we were you thinking specifically about uh the uh allowances for allowances for
57:46
heating bills for wi-fi that kind of thing i think it's it's a difficult one i mean i think it
57:52
will depend most contracts most employment contracts may not cover it you know some if we're
57:58
thinking more broadly about allowances and pay i think the biggest consideration is going to be commuting costs
58:04
um so i understand that on the grapevine there's been some discussion in hr circles about
58:10
basically can i can i reduce people's pay because they're not having to pay for commuting costs
58:15
now unless you have that uh baked into an employment contract you're not going to be able to
58:21
easily at least and certainly not safely just take a take a cut saying this is
58:28
what i reckon you're spending on commuting and i'm going to pay you less but i think the longer term
58:33
implications um we may see something playing out there so we may see
58:38
that with new jobs coming up that um there there is a sort of a london waiting that's not
58:44
applied or there's not the same allowances made for
58:50
for commuting costs um or london living whatever and i would imagine that those
58:57
costs will uh outstrip any costs that people need to pay for for heating and so on i think if
59:04
employers can give um their workers allowances in the meantime
59:09
uh for the current you know temporary situation then i think that's great i i don't think that it's going to be
59:15
easy to just change by fear people's employment contracts
59:20
uh certainly if it's talking about reducing pay but i do think over the longer term we might see we
59:26
might see changes but there's really there's really positive things about this too if we can if more people are working
59:33
from home this could mean that that fewer people have to come and live in the big smoke um
59:41
and i think you know we see for example one of the major if not the major
59:47
generational differences is in is in housing equity so young people you know pressure to move to london what
59:54
are they going to do they're going to buy a shoe box at some extortion at price that's all they can afford whereas
1:00:00
if we've got more home working then people may we may be less london-centric as a society people
1:00:06
may be able to um you know live other parts of the country
1:00:12
and i think that there are some there are some issues to iron through but there are also some opportunities
1:00:18
with regarding to you know pay and income and all of that thank you johnny i'm going to have to wrap it up there but um it's nice to
1:00:24
finish on a on a positive note about the opportunities to to come um thank you so much johnny
1:00:29
allen and lee for taking part for sharing your insight and experiences thank you so much everybody for watching um for all your questions
1:00:36
and it's also great to see you sharing um with each other on the chat as well it just makes it a much more
1:00:42
interactive experience um a reminder that the webinar and slides will be available later um as alan said we'll
1:00:48
explore with hr inform what kind of resources um we're able to add um and if you keep visiting the cipd
1:00:54
coronavirus hub um everything will be appearing there as we as we add more content we'll be back on the 15th of october um
1:01:02
with a session about redundancies and how to get them right and make them as humane and people centered
1:01:08
as possible um so do come along to that if that's something that you're considering as an organization but that is it from
1:01:14
us for now i hope you found it useful and we shall see you next time thanks very much for watching bye
1:01:29
you