The low number of cases that make it to tribunal is just \u201cthe tip of the iceberg\u201d said Jim Moore, the firm\u2019s employee relations expert.<\/p>\n
He told HR magazine: \u201cThis is really a measure of conflict. What triggered us to do the research was an increase in anecdotal reports across the HR profession that there were tensions and queries in this area. Tribunals are the last resort of escalation, so we\u2019re not seeing all the grievances and disciplinaries behind the scenes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still working on refining the statistics for an update [on the number of remote working cases that have reached tribunal] but that trend appears to be continuing; it\u2019s certainly not declining.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one recent case, a senior employee at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) had a request to work permanently from home justifiably rejected by her employer.<\/p>\n
This has been seen as a landmark case for return-to-office policies by some employers, according to Richard Fox, partner at Keystone Law, who told The Guardian: \u201cThe FCA case was not binding but employers have felt it is an important case to consider,\u201d he said. \u201cThe issue is becoming a battleground and we advise employers to play it very carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moore added that the FCA had actually been quite accommodating, having already embraced hybrid working with two days worked remotely each week; it had offered the manager an extra day of remote work before the manager filed her claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had tried to meet her in the middle to give that extra flexibility, but it was the employee who was intransigent. In that case, the employer could show they had a legitimate aim and proportional means of getting there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t embolden employers to say: \u2018Right, now it\u2019s open season\u2019 and push back on flexible working or hybrid requests. As always, each case should be considered on its own merits.\u201d<\/p>\n
This rings particularly true for employees that might be disadvantaged should their request be dismissed unfairly: Moore picked out, for example, that many more women than men have caring responsibilities, and thus may be more likely to request hybrid or flexible working practices.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe\u2019re seeing signs of a potential emerging trend there. There\u2019s prior case law that has established that women, sociologically, are more likely to carry the burden of looking after children, for example.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The low number of cases that make it to tribunal is just \u201cthe tip of the iceberg\u201d said Jim Moore, the firm\u2019s employee relations expert. He told HR magazine: \u201cThis is really a measure of conflict. What triggered us to do the research was an increase in anecdotal reports across the HR profession that there […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2679,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677\/revisions\/2679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}