Working from home

Recent research by Autonomy has revealed that working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in unpaid overtime with an expectation for those working from home to pick up emails outside of the working day. This in turn has had a negative effect on mental health and is said to have disproportionately affected women.

During lockdown, those working from home were often working longer days, dipping into emails in the evenings and weekends and often juggling family life, which can lead to burnout. The lines between work time and family time became blurred. It was widely experienced that those working from home were generally just as or more productive from home than the office.

There are now calls for legislation to be put into place to protect those working from home and to have a cap on the working day with a “right to disconnect”.

Since the restrictions have eased, there has been a push to get people back into towns and cities. Some have suggested that those who continue to work from home should be paid less than their office counterparts. This is probably based on the fact that those working from home are not having to spend time and money commuting and in turn this is unfair to the office workers. In effect, workers from home had gained a financial advantage, but is this really a reasonable reason to reduce pay? Pre-pandemic, some employees walked or only travelled 5 minutes to the office when others would spend hours in a car, bus or train commuting in, so why would travel be a reasonable reason to revise pay now? There didn’t appear to be any consideration to increase the pay of those working from home when they were working additional hours and many organisations gave no thought to the fact that employees were now using their own utilities, facilities and upgrading their broadband to facilitate working from home.

It would seem that the drive to encourage employees back into the office is in part driven by employers, but it also means more people in towns and cities spending money which will boost the economy.

Employers need to be very careful about how they decide to deal with working from home and a potential threat of a pay cut. Any change to terms and conditions of employment needs to be reviewed and dealt with like any other change. Employers need to give consideration to whether in fact those working from home now work less hours, whether their duties have changed and diminished and whether their expectations have changed e.g. have targets reduced for those working from home?

Employers could quite easily find themselves walking into unlawful deduction of wages claims, constructive dismissal claim and potential Equal Pay claims if a reduction in wages is unreasonably enforced.

If you require any advice in respect of changing the terms and conditions of employment or indeed in respect of managing working from home please do not hesitate to contact a member of our Employment Department.