With more employees than ever working from home, employers must ensure they have a working from home policy in place that is clear on standards and expectations for remote workers, while ensuring legal compliance and protecting their interests.
Homeworking is where a member of staff is permitted to carry out their daily contractual duties from home on an occasional, temporary, permanent or hybrid basis. There are various benefits to homeworking for your business, including lowering overhead costs, freeing up office space, and a happier and potentially more productive workforce with improved staff attraction and retention.
In this guide for employers, we share an overview of the law relating to working from home, including an employer’s legal responsibilities toward their employees, and what a working from home policy should include as a matter of best practice.
The law on working from home
There is no statutory right to work from home in the UK, however, employment contracts and related documents such as a staff handbook or working from home policy, can contain terms dealing with flexible and remote working arrangements.
The employee will still work in accordance with the core conditions under their contract of employment, such as the same working hours and pay, but will not be required to go into their official place of work for those days where working remotely has been agreed.
Working from home is a type of flexible working arrangement that can enable employees to meet the demands of their job role while providing a degree of flexibility to achieve a better work/life balance.
Under the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023, effective from April 2024, employees have the right to request flexible working including working from home, from the first day of employment. They are allowed to make two flexible working requests within a 12-month period.
Employers are not obligated to approve every request and can refuse based on specific business reasons. Employers can decline flexible working requests for several legitimate business reasons, including:
- Additional Costs: The request would impose a financial burden on the business.
- Impact on Customer Demand: The change would negatively affect the ability to meet customer needs.
- Inability to Reorganise Work: Challenges in redistributing work among existing staff.
- Detrimental Effect on Quality or Performance: The adjustment would lower work quality or overall performance.
- Insufficient Work During Proposed Times: Lack of available work during the requested hours.
- Planned Structural Changes: Upcoming changes that would be impacted by the flexible working arrangement.
Employers are required to respond to requests within two months and must consult with employees before rejecting a request.
What are an employer’s responsibilities for homeworkers?
By law, all employers are under a duty of care to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of their employees, including when an employee works from home.
Ordinarily, you would be expected to carry out some form of health and safety risk assessment of the workspace available within the employee’s home environment. A risk assessment can still be completed, even in the current climate, by way of an employee questionnaire, ensuring that every individual feels that the work they are being asked to do can be achieved safely at home.
You will be responsible for ensuring that employees have access to the right equipment and technology needed to conduct their role from home, such as a laptop, mobile phone, suitable business software and good internet connectivity. Where this needs to be set up or provided, you will be responsible for making this happen, together with any necessary training and support to work from home or to use any remote working systems.
During the course of any period of homeworking you should also keep in regular contact with employees, checking on their health and wellbeing. This includes any mental health issues that may arise as a result of high levels of stress and anxiety, or feelings of isolation, caused by working from home or because of work-related issues.
What should a working from home policy include?
Whether you are considering implementing a working from home policy on a permanent basis or as a temporary measure, you will need clear rules setting out any eligibility requirements, how to request working from home and how this will work in practice.
Below we consider some of the key aspects of a working from home policy.
Eligibility criteria
Your working from home policy should include clear guidelines to let your staff know who is eligible for home working and who is not, as well as how to apply.
When considering eligibility, you will need to take into account the impact on your business of allowing homeworking, and whether this is economically and operationally viable without placing your business at a significant disadvantage.
It may be that the business can survive with only a key number of employees working within certain roles, with the majority working from home. In other cases, working from home may not be possible at all.
Any decision to allow homeworking does not need to be implemented across your entire organisation, although you should be transparent and clear about the basis upon which employees are eligible to work from home, ensuring that this does not discriminate against certain individuals or groups of individuals.
Carrying out a risk assessment
For those who are eligible for homeworking, you will still need to carry out some form of risk assessment for that individual, ensuring that they can work from home safely and reliably without direct supervision, and whether homeworking is feasible in terms of space and equipment, as well as any caring responsibilities, such as for young children or sick and elderly relatives.
Your questionnaire should include asking details about the employee’s personal circumstances or vulnerabilities that you may need to be aware of, such as whether the employee is pregnant, has a weakened immune system or a long-term medical condition such as diabetes, cancer, chronic lung disease or respiratory conditions such as asthma, or lives with anyone with these conditions.
You will also need to ask questions relating to the viability of working from home, including access to any necessary devices, paperwork, office furniture, computer applications, software and a secure internet connection.
Establishing a homeworking agreement
Homeworking can be very different to face-to-face work practices, presenting all sorts of new practical daily challenges. It is important that you set out how you expect employees to perform while working remotely, exactly what they are required to do and how things will work in practice.
This should include agreeing to the following:
- At what times the employee will be available to work
- At what times the employee will be able to take breaks
- The ways in which employees will keep in touch and with whom
- Who employees should contact if they have any problems
- Exactly what the employee is required to do
- How their performance will be managed and measured
It is important to recognise that some individuals may find it hard to organise themselves when working from home, so setting daily or weekly tasks may be a good way of providing a suitable structure for those working remotely.
Ensuring cyber security and data protection
When working from home it is important that employees are fully trained in the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act. If you plan to let your staff use their own devices when working remotely, you need to think about how they will keep any important data safe and private, as well as how any hardcopy files and paperwork will be stored.
You should ensure that homeworkers store and save all online files in the central cloud storage for your company or organisation, and not locally on their own device. Your work from home policy should also include rules such as ensuring employees protect their own devices with antivirus software where necessary. You may need to offer a financial contribution to cover this cost.
Keeping in touch with homeworkers
Regularly keeping in touch with homeworkers is not only essential to the operational needs of your business, but to ensure their health and wellbeing.
It is important that employees have the means to easily communicate with their manager or colleagues, so as to share progress and stay up-to-date with work projects. This might involve new ways of working, for example, using video or conference calling technology, as well as ensuring that employees feel fully supported on both a professional and personal basis.
For those homeworkers with children or other caring responsibilities, you will need to be sensitive and flexible toward their situation. You may need to agree to a more flexible homeworking arrangement, for example, working reduced or different hours, or reducing work targets and being flexible about deadlines.
You may also need to make adjustments to any temporary arrangements to improve an individual’s working conditions, as well as ensuring sufficient IT support to cope with the number of staff working from home at any one time.
Need assistance?
Making changes to working practices can offer considerable benefits to both the employee and employer, but it will be important to have an effective working from home policy in place to have clarity of roles and responsibilities.
Ensuring that you have in place a homeworking policy, with clear guidelines as to what is expected of an employee working remotely, is imperative to maintaining the operational needs of your business, as well as the health and wellbeing of the homeworker.
By failing to establish clear boundaries, this could lead to issues including a lack of productivity, unmotivated employees, social isolation and over-working or working unsocial hours. By providing guidance and support, maintaining regular contact and monitoring an employee’s performance, you can help to manage and pre-empt any potential issues.
In relation to flexible working requests for home working, employers must adhere to statutory procedures and consider the evolving expectations of the modern workforce when deciding on any such requests.
DavidsonMorris’ employment lawyers can help with all aspects of workforce management. Working closely with our HR specialists, we offer a holistic advisory and support service for employers encompassing both the legal and people management elements of flexible and hybrid working arrangements. Speak to our experts today for advice.
Working from home policy FAQs
What should be included in a working from home policy?
The policy should provide the official guidelines for anyone working from home and for managers responsible for managing homeworkers. This includes details of what is allowable, expectations and the procedures to follow.
What is the law on working from home?
There is no right to work from home, but employees have a right to request flexible working, which could include a remote working arrangement.
Can an employer refuse working from home?
Employers must consider requests for flexible working, but they may refuse if they have good reason and have engaged in meaningful consultation with the employee.
Author
Founder and Managing Director Anne Morris is a fully qualified solicitor and trusted adviser to large corporates through to SMEs, providing strategic immigration and global mobility advice to support employers with UK operations to meet their workforce needs through corporate immigration.
She is a recognised by Legal 500 and Chambers as a legal expert and delivers Board-level advice on business migration and compliance risk management as well as overseeing the firm’s development of new client propositions and delivery of cost and time efficient processing of applications.
Anne is an active public speaker, immigration commentator, and immigration policy contributor and regularly hosts training sessions for employers and HR professionals
