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Pod 6, The Engine Rooms, Station Road
Chepstow
Monmouthshire

01633 730907

For more than 10 years we have provided companies of all sizes and in a variety of sectors with uncomplicated, innovative and affordable human resources advice and on-site support ensuring that your people are an asset to your company and not a liability.

News

With the National Minimum Wage (NMW) now almost fifteen years old, and with another increase pending on 1st April 2017 HMRC have issued a list of the most elaborate excuses they've been given by employers for not paying the appropriate rates:

The End of Advice to Work from Home

Alan Kitto

With Government COVID advice changing to longer require employees to work from home if they can, we’ve received an increasing number of enquiries as to whether employers can insist that employees return to work from their offices.

The simple answer to this question is ‘yes you can’ but things are never as cut and dried in employment law and there are two potential flies in the ointment that employers may face.

The first of these is that all employees are legally entitled to make a flexible working request, providing (a) they have more than 26 weeks service and haven’t made a flexible working request within the last 52 weeks, irrespective of whether it was agreed or not; a flexible working request may include a request to work from home on a full-time or hybrid working basis.

Whilst employers aren’t compelled to agree to such requests, they are compelled to give them proper consideration and typically they can only be declined for a number of sound business reasons:

  1. A burden of additional cost

  2. An inability to reorganise work among exiting stag or recruit additional staff (typically only where the flexible working request is for a change or reduction to working hours)

  3. A detrimental impact on quality, performance, or the employers ability to meet customer demand

  4. Insufficient work for the proposed new working hours (typically only where the flexible working request is for a change or reduction to working hours)

  5. Where the employer intends to reorganise or change the business and considers the flexible working changes may not fit in with their plans

Most likely ‘1’ and ‘3’ would be the two most likely reasons for declining a work from home request, but where employees have been successfully working from home in the last two years, these may be hard for the employer to justify; employers may counter-propose hybrid working as an alternative.

The second area for consideration is where an employee feels unsafe returning to the office for fear of catching COVID. There is a provision with the Employment Rights Act 1986 which states the employees must not be subjected to a detriment (typically disciplinary action, demotion or dismissal) to refusing to work in an environment which they reasonably believe to present serious and imminent danger to their health.

It’s untested legally whether not paying the employee for refusing to attend work would be considered a detriment.

We’d strongly advise you to discuss any refusals to return to the office with us before deciding on any action. dismissals on the grounds of health and safety are automatically unfair and an unreasonable refusal to a flexible working request could prompt a resignation followed by a constructive unfair dismissal claim.