Employer refusing to allow working from home

rtho782

I apologise for vagueness here, but I don't want to be too specific.

I work for an aircraft maintenance organisation, there are approx 200 employees on my local site working for my employer. Of these, perhaps 50 are support staff, that are 100% office based, working solely on a computer, with no requirement to do anything outside of desk based computer work whatsoever - prime candidates for working from home.

A further 25 or so are desk based but need to be hands on semi-regularly with paperwork etc that is used on the aircraft, so arguably at most could WFH and come in once a week or so.

The remaining employees are hands on aircraft maintenance staff, and obviously cannot work from home.

We have recently, after much hassle, gotten a load of laptops for the organisation from our customer, specifically part of the COVID-19 resilience scheme that our customer - whose IT infrastructure we are dependant on - is running. The intention is to allow us to skeleton staff.

My employer has decided these laptops will be kept in storage and used only where people are required to self isolate, as it would be unfair to allow some staff to work from home where others cannot, and "we pay them to be in work so they will be in work".

Is there anything firmer than "guidance" we can use to push back on this? It seems like all the government has provided is suggestions which isn't really very helpful.

KatrinaWaves

No there’s nothing. It’s riddled with ‘if’ ‘where possible’ ‘unless’ 

It’s entirely up to the employer whether they think home working is appropriate, feasible or necessary. I believe the only requirements are to make the workplace ‘covid secure’ 

Browntoa

As above , no right to work from home at all .

You can ask , they can refuse .

All that's needed is adequate risk assessment at your workplace for covid , which should be documented by your employer.

rtho782

Ah, that kind of makes much of this effort to get people to work from home and avoid spreading the virus pointless.

Would it make any difference if lockdown repeats? After all, the guidance for lockdown was only to travel to attend work that cannot be done from home, if it CAN be done from home then surely we are not allowed to go to work?

They have been required by the customer to do individual risk assessments for each staff member that they want to bring in work but these have been pretty much lip service.

Would a risk assessment not be about balance of risk vs benefit, that is, a non-zero amount of risk vs a zero benefit (as everything can be done from home without the risk) should immediately come down on the side of "don't do it"?

KatrinaWaves

There have already been 2 lockdowns and nothing changed.

As I have already said, there is nothing saying you are ‘not allowed’ to go to work if you can work from home. Its all guidance.

You don’t see the benefit for you personally, but your employers do see the benefit. There is nothing legally to back you up I’m afraid.

Lomast

Unfortunately this is one of the areas I think Boris did not handle very well, he said verbally at a briefing at one point you must work from home if you can but then the legislation did not make it a requirement and merely guidance

[Deleted User]

I had lack of communication and leadership over work from home during the last lockdown and could only watch on whilst someone got recruited to work from home for the majority of the working week to know there is nothing officially helpful on this matter, what I can say is we came out of latest period only to have a full day’s power cut announced in the area where my office is and so funnily and amazingly it becomes just suitable for me to work from home then...... so hope for a power cut.

KatrinaWaves

Lomast said:

Unfortunately this is one of the areas I think Boris did not handle very well, he said verbally at a briefing at one point you must work from home if you can but then the legislation did not make it a requirement and merely guidance

One of the things? 😂

but yeah, if you can is very much ‘if you can and if your employer says you can’ rather than physically ‘can you’

TELLIT01

The IT systems may be able to cope with a few people working from home at a time, but not if large numbers were to do so.  Supporting large numbers working from home is not necessarily straightforward.  It is a decision for the employer whether they believe working from home is possible / practical / desirable.

Savvy_Sue

TELLIT01 said:

The IT systems may be able to cope with a few people working from home at a time, but not if large numbers were to do so.  Supporting large numbers working from home is not necessarily straightforward.  It is a decision for the employer whether they believe working from home is possible / practical / desirable.

That is certainly true: we're less than 1/4 the size of the OP's setup, and pre-lockdown WFH only happened regularly for managers, and that only one day a week. Mercifully about half the staff needed to access our files through a remote server, even in the office, but when nearly ALL of us were trying to do that, everything creaked badly. 

The other thing I'd say to the OP is that just supplying laptops doesn't really cut it from a Health and Safety point of view. You can't get a laptop set up without adding a keyboard and stand of some description, and if the member of staff doesn't have a sensible chair then problems will follow.

The employer ought to do a basic DSE assessment - we've done this by issuing staff with a questionnaire, so we're a bit dependent on them answering honestly. But if anyone says they don't have a suitable workspace (only able to work in their bedroom, for example), we get them into the office. For everyone else, we've sent home keyboards, mice, chairs, monitor overlays, stands, lumbar cushions. 

TBagpuss

as other have said, the rules allow the employer to determine whether or not it is practical for employees to work from home home, subject to their providing a covid-safe workplace (and other for those businesses which were required to close completely, like pus, that was true during lock down as well) 

If you have specific concerns about the workplace such as it being too crowded to allow for social distancing, then obviously you can raise those with whoever is responsible for H&S in your workplace.
It's worth bearing in mind that employers have to carry out risk assessment of working from home arrangements too - normally that would include visiting your home to carry out the assessment, and as SavvySue says, a laptop alone isn't normally going to be adequate for working from home anyway.