Whitehall needs to butt out of businesses’ rules on home working
Good news, British workers! If you want to work flexibly, by adjusting your hours or working from home, then a consultation document due to be published on Thursday may give you the right to request it from day one. If an employer dares deny it, they’ll need to explain why and suggest an alternative working arrangement. Loathe rush hour? Avoid it! Your colleagues? Ditto!
Over the course of coronavirus, the idea that jobs are only worth doing if they’re convenient to workers has gained popularity. Many now piously insist that employee wellbeing should be placed at the core of company operations and unscrupulous employers kept in check by our benevolent state. There is no alternative recourse, apparently, because exploited employees are incapable of voting with their feet by working for businesses that adopt the practices they prefer and resigning if they don’t.
Earlier this month a woman was awarded £180,000 after her employer, the estate agent Manors, refused her request to work four days a week and leave the office at 5pm (an hour early) to collect her child from nursery. Alice Thompson was earning £120,000 a year. It is inconceivable that she could not afford the childcare needed to complete a day’s work, she just didn’t want it. Feminist groups have hailed the landmark case as a great leap forward, conveniently forgetting that it doesn’t much help childless women and risks deterring others firms from hiring those of childbearing age.
The ruling is only a triumph if you disregard the wealth of evidence showing the compliance costs of employment regulation to employers. There are now over 250,000 employees in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings who have personnel, industrial relations, training or human resources in their job title. A quarter of a million people who monitor, keep records, schedule diversity training – and this isn’t to mention the junior administrators who may be tasked with similar work, nor the 5 per cent of a general manager’s time taken up with personnel matters.
In competitive conditions, employment regulations are passed onto workers in the form of lower pay or slower wage growth, and possibly reduced employment. As we may see after the Thompson case, it can lead to discrimination against some potential employees – and often the ones this kind of legislation is created to help.
And while there are obvious advantages of flexible working to employees, this isn’t clear cut. Many younger workers in particular would happily trade hunching over the kitchen table for the luxury of a desk and ergonomic chair. Surveys have revealed Millennials – longing for human interaction and the distinction between their professional and personal lives that set hours and a commute provide – missed the workplace more than anyone else during the pandemic.
Study after study has confirmed that those who can work from home are able to complete daily tasks just as well from their living rooms as from the office. Among many, productivity inched up. A recent study of 61,000 Microsoft employees found that hours worked increased when they shifted to working flexibly. Employers, meanwhile, can benefit from lower overhead costs, more efficient communication, and saving on team building events.
The point isn’t that all businesses would like all employees placed under house arrest, nor that all employees want to work 9-5 on site. Remote working may mean companies squeeze more hours out of their staff- but it can also be a drag on innovation and creativity. Some employees would rather converse by email than corridor chat. None of this is to mention that most people cannot work from home, and this feel-good policy would only “empower” a privileged minority. Civil servants cannot possibly know the preferences of tens of millions of individuals, which is precisely why government should sit back and let the two parties come to their own, voluntary, arrangements.
Instead, we are on a runaway train to ever-increasing employment regulation, powered by the intractable attitude that employers must always meet our needs and preferences. In traditional employment, flexibility is king. Over in the gig economy, where surveys repeatedly show giggers value flexibility over basic rights like holiday or sick pay, ministers are promising added protections that will undermine the control those workers want. It is maddeningly inconsistent and needlessly paternalistic, but it’s also what we’ve come to expect from a rudderless government that only knows where it stands after seeing which way the wind is blowing.