As a legacy of the pandemic, many workers in the UK have got used to doing their jobs from home over the past few years.
But as more and more organisations have begun introducing policies calling for employees to return to the office for five days a week, newly released figures from TfL suggest that the return to office post-pandemic has slumped.
Latest data has shown that commuter numbers have only grown by 1.1 per cent in the last three months compared to the same period last year.
Amazon is one of the companies changing its policy, upping its three-day-in-office policy to five days to ensure employees “invent, collaborate and be connected”. “If there are people who just don’t work well in that environment and don’t want to, that’s okay, there are other companies around,” said unit CEO Matt Garman.
Edinburgh-based fund manager Baillie Gifford is another, with the organisation’s 1,800 employees told they needed to return to the office full time. “In a recent video update to all staff, they were asked to come into the office on their working days, unless there’s a sensible reason not to,” a spokesperson for the firm told Sky News. “But of course we maintain a degree of flexibility for all staff, as we always have done, pre-pandemic.”
As more businesses attempt to return their office culture to pre-pandemic times, what are your rights when it comes to flexible working and working from home?
Working from home rights
Currently, all employees in England, Scotland and Wales have the legal right to request flexible working conditions from their first day on the job. This includes changes to the number of hours they work, their start and finish times, the days of the week they work and where they work from.
Employers are required legally to deal with these requests in a “reasonable manner”, examples of which include assessing the pros and cons of the application, discussing potential alternatives to the employee’s request and offering an appeal process if they disagree. If a request is not handled in said manner, an employee can take the case to an employee tribunal. However, if an employer has a “good” business reason against the request, they are allowed to refuse an application.
In Northern Ireland, the rules are slightly different. An employee has to have worked for their employer for at least 26 weeks before making a flexible working request, and only one application can be made every year.
Employers must respond to a request within 28 days and requests should be “seriously considered”. If a request is rejected, it’s because it has to relate to a limited number of set grounds, including:
Planned structural changes
- Burden of additional costs
- Detrimental impact on quality
- Inability to recruit additional staff
- Detrimental impact on performance
- Inability to reorganise work amongst existing staff
- Detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand
- Insufficient work for the periods the employee proposes to work
