Over the past year, major tech companies have been in a tug of war with their employees over the return to the office, and not just them. A large number of companies have been coming to grips with Hybrid Working and Remote Working over the past two years for obvious reasons. There have been articles for around a decade now of people predicting the gradual adoption of a remote workforce, however, none of them could have known that soon we would have to temporarily abandon the streets in the future.

I’ve mentioned the coronavirus a lot recently, especially in relation to Remote Working, but that’s because it really has been a catalyst for change, in the very definition of the word. It was already happening slowly, and now all of a sudden, it’s here.

 

So what is it? Well, let’s split Hybrid Working and Remote Working apart. Remote working, work from home, home-based, etc. is self-explaining, employees do all their work remotely. This does not mean that they cannot come into the office, assuming there is one, but they are not required to. This has its advantages and disadvantages but we’ll get to them later. Hybrid Working is a split between in-person working and Remote Working, with the ratio varying depending on the position. 

There are a few benefits to allowing an employee to work remotely, the first being that you are able to significantly expand your recruitment area, even if that just means your council area or county. Most employers that we’ve dealt with tend to want their remote employees to be within reach if need be, however, you can still dramatically increase your candidate pool by considering applicants far outside the range of reasonable daily commute.

As for hybrid workers, this applies to a lesser degree depending on how many days they are required to work in person. They may be willing to travel 40 minutes each way once a week, but will not do it multiple times a week. The more days they are in, the more the travel adds up and the area that you can draw candidates from shrinks closer to your business.

 

On the other hand, Hybrid Working can be used to offer more flexibility to one of your workers, for example, an employee with a young child or baby, who has to share the duty of care on certain days throughout the week. Or maybe to simply cut down on the commute on days without meetings, to aid with employee retention and satisfaction. With Hybrid Working you still get the benefit of having in-person meeting attendance, being able to build a team culture and the ability to set clear objectives in person, whilst still offering flexibility and enriching benefits to the employee.

Another advantage is that you can save on office costs with employees working remotely, and even with Hybrid Working you can have a coworking space that allows for both types of working whilst using less room. This is not just beneficial with saving on office costs, but also allows you to increase your numbers without moving officers or renting additional space. It is possible to keep a valued employee who is moving further away or leaving due to other circumstances, by offering them remote work and/or flexitime, which they may or may not accept.

However, this raises the issue of accountability. With fully Remote Working there can be a lack of accountability and little ability to remedy the situation if one of the employees decides to abuse that trust. With Hybrid Working this is not so much of an issue, as you have plenty of opportunities to build a team culture, work directly with the individual and set expectations in person regularly. You can deal with this issue by maintaining regular communication, just like you would in person, and building a team environment, making any lack of support evident to all involved. Ideally, this should never be needed.

 

At this point, you may be thinking that Hybrid Working seems far more flexible in its application, with fewer drawbacks for the employer whilst providing the best of both worlds, which is true, however, there is another reason why you might want to consider Remote Working. Remote Working offers the most flexibility for the employee, making it far more desirable, as well as being far better known, which can result in more applications to the position and make it easier to secure better talent. If you are working from home, you know what you are getting, whilst with Hybrid Working having less of a spotlight and varying so greatly in how much work is remote, you can end up with less applicants unless you specify in the job ad exactly how much of the position is remote.

Sometimes it’s simply not possible for a job to be done remotely, or even with Hybrid Working. In that case, there is little you can do except provide other incentives to attract and retain employees, which is briefly discussed near the end of these two posts. Ultimately, attracting quality employees and retaining them for your business are two sides of the same coin.
https://ismepeople.com/post-pandemic-recruiting/
https://ismepeople.com/fine-tuning-job-adverts/

 

Now let’s focus on already existing employees for a bit. If you ask the government, they list flexible working as including job sharing, working from home, part-time work, compressed hours, flexitime, annualised hours, staggered hours and phased retirement. Our interest today may be on Remote Working and Hybrid Working, but there is a legal right for employees to request flexible working, which they are eligible to do after 26 weeks with the employer.

Once this happens, by standard there is a 3-month deadline for the employer to respond in a “reasonable manner”. This rather vague requirement is mostly defined through best practice and some legal requirements which can be found here: https://www.acas.org.uk/acas-code-of-practice-on-flexible-working-requests/html

Included is the list of reasons that a request can be denied, mostly centering around the creation of additional burdens for the business, a loss of business performance, insufficient work for the employees if approved or imminent business change. If you see the list in full, you will notice that the legally accepted reasons for rejection are extensive and sometimes vague. I expect that if you were really determined, you could find a reason to deny any request for Hybrid or Remote working, however, I would not recommend this for a few reasons.

The first is that you run the risk of the employee leaving the business for a position offering the benefit or simply due to employer dissatisfaction if a contrived reason is given. The result being that you lose an experienced team member and have to recruit in the current job market or now have a demotivated employee who likely won’t stay long. The second is that you could run the risk of the employee making a claim to the employment tribunal if the request is not handled appropriately. Third, there are the aforementioned savings and other benefits. Fourth, there is no reason why it should result in a guaranteed loss in performance or cohesion if handled appropriately. Finally, once you have worked out the best way to implement it with a current employee, you can use it to attract new talent when desired.

 

If handled appropriately, an individual Working Remotely or Hybrid Working can have a similar amount of professional contact and contribute just as much as in person, potentially more due to increased motivation, etc. A lot of it comes down to it being a new dynamic that needs adapting to, but you can be assured that before long there will be an overwhelming amount of advice on how to manage it, in fact, there already is.

If you would like to talk further about how to make this work within your business then please contact cathy.knight@ismepeople.co.uk