The workplace post-lockdown: how do social landlords embrace agile working?

Most employees’ place of work clause states the office as their location. If you wish to implement agile working on a permanent basis, this needs amending to the employee’s home address or wherever they choose to work from. Agile working could be anywhere like a cafe or other premises, while working from home is just that.

Hours of work

Will you require employees to work their contracted hours of 9am–5pm from home, or will you give them flexibility as to how they work their contracted hours? If so this clause will also need amending.

Policies and procedures

You will need to carry out a review of your policies and procedures and amend them to allow for agile working. For example, to allow for grievance, disciplinary hearings and internal meetings generally to take place via video call.

Broadband speed

It’s all very well saying your employees can work from home, but you need to make sure they have the facilities to do that. Employers I have been advising have said staff can work from home conditional on a proven broadband speed so they can get their work done and attend meetings remotely.

This is at the employee’s own cost, not the employer’s. If their broadband isn’t quick enough then they reserve the right to cancel the agreement to agile working and the employee reverts back to being required to work in the office.

Having access to employees’ homes

It is important that you include a clause in employees’ contracts that allows you access to their homes to make sure they are suitable for home-working from a health and safety point of view. As an employer you have a responsibility to ensure the safe working environment of your employees, such as carrying out maintenance on any electrical equipment provided to the employee.

This is in addition to ensuring your employees’ workspaces are set up in a suitable way (desk, chair etc).

Ensuring data protection and confidentiality

Pre-pandemic, employees were normally prohibited from sending confidential information to their home computer or taking confidential documents out of the office. Clearly with home-working that can’t be the case, but it is important to strengthen confidentiality clauses in contracts of employment by ensuring processes are in place to deal with this information in the right way.

More stringent measures will be required, such as the use of encryption and password protection of documents. Employers moving to permanent agile working have therefore either sought to include contractual provisions covering this in employees’ contracts of employment or have introduced an agile working policy covering this.

What is the future?

Most employers that I have dealt with are embracing the idea of agile working and, for many, coming into the office five days a week is a thing of the past. Many have carried out surveys of their employees and found that the majority don’t want to come back into the office full-time.

Working from home has addressed the work-life balance, and to their credit, employers have embraced this as long as the work is getting done. Will we ever return to what was considered normal before? I really don’t think we will and I don’t expect many office workers to have to go back into the office every day full-time again.

Of course, once lockdown restrictions are lifted entirely, if employers do want their employees back in full-time, it will be down to the employee to request to work on an agile basis and ask their employer to agree to vary their contract. However, there will be no obligation on the employer to do so.

Katie Maguire, employment law partner, Devonshires