If you’re management, would you allow staff to wfh full time in these circumstances? Advice needed…

[HaIfofmyheartisinHavana]

The company I work for is an exclusively online retailer along the lines of Amazon, ASOS etc. Very large national and international customer base.

The shift finishes in the middle of the night- between 2-2:30 a.m.

The role is entirely online based and involves staring at a screen in near silence for 5-8 hours. Communication within the team is mostly done through online messaging.

My team starts our shift in the same office as the daytime team of the same dept- but there are so few team members doing this shift that when the daytime team finishes at 10pm, those remaining have to log off, pack up all our stuff, physically leave the building and walk across a car park in the dark to a different building just so we aren’t left alone in a vast empty warehouse. The team members are all women.

When in the different building we have to occupy another daytime team (from a different dept)’s regular desks. Meaning any adjustments we make to seats or screens have to be undone at the end of every shift.

My team is not paid any more than the daytime team for working unsociable hours. The pay is marginally above NMW.

Almost all the team members live some distance from the office- between 1/2 hr to 1 hr drive.

Unlike the day teams, my team has to have our team meeting towards the end of the shift. It always runs over meaning we are leaving to go home even later. We are not paid any extra for this. The daytime has their meetings during their shift and they always leave on time.

There is no practical element to the role that necessitates physically being present in the office.

My dept head has been pushing me to get back to the office as soon as possible since before my maternity leave finished a few months ago. I have been allowed to wfh full time for the last 3 months and have to return to office working next week. Previously colleagues in the same team as me have been allowed to wfh full time after mat leave for up to a year.

I want to submit a flexible working request to be allowed to wfh continuously, but I’m 99% certain it’ll just be rejected outright- the justification for making us come to the office is simply “we are a hybrid business, nobody works from home full time”. Which in my opinion is not so much a justification as it is a different way of saying “because I said so”.

Therefore I need to make the application as strong as possible- pointing out that my performance whilst wfh these last few months has not suffered in the slightest as evidenced by my glowing end of year review, and highlighting the many proven detrimental effects that night shifts have on one’s health which the company (which purports to be supportive and really care about its people) would be at least slightly mitigating by allowing us to wfh.

Would be very grateful for all opinions and advice.

Even though, as PP advised, you don't have to give a reason, I would point out the various ways wfh will be beneficial to your employer. Maybe put something together using some of these points www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/benefits-of-work-from-home-for-employers

It’s eBay customer service, isn’t it?

Sounds like you need to join a union. And if you're shift goes over, definitely ask to be paid for that. Why are you all agreeing to work for free? Get organised.

If your team are salaried, and paid just over NMW, but regularly working additional hours, the first issue is in long months there’s a risk of NMW compliance breach. Especially if there’s also a salary sacrifice pension deduction. First thing is to get those meetings either paid, or finished on time.

Join Unite. Get your fellow employees to join Unite. They will advise and negotiate with your employers.

The issue is that company policy doesn’t over ride employment legislation. We don’t do that as a company isn’t a valid business reason for declining.

If you declined it under that reason you could quite likely end up at tribunal. You aren’t the only organisation struggling to catch up with this.

As an organisation we don’t do fully wfh contracts. As an HR professional in that organisation I recognise that we will probably have to due to changes in the law. It’s not as easy as stating our company is hybrid. That won’t stand up if challenged and will lose at tribunal.

2 separate issues and shouldn’t be conflated

This sounds horrible OP!

In my experience as a manager, sone things you might want to think about:
1 - the business is possibly worried about setting a precedent for WFH for other shifts/teams, and ending up with no one in the office.

2 - I genuinely believe that working together f2f at least a couple of times a week is beneficial for team cohesion, personal development etc.

3 - the moving buildings mid shifts sounds like a PITA, but sitting at different desks, setting up the chair, screen etc every day is pretty common (hot-desking).

4 - Flexible working requests are most successful I find if you can demonstrate no detriment to the business, and at least a couple of - benefits to the business; health, safety and welfare advantages; cost savings to the business, then why it works better for you. Don't threaten to leave if they won't do this, they don't care that much.

5 - what time do you actually start?

6 - is it a customer facing/call centre type job? Presumably this is why you can't have your team meeting during the middle of the shift? Could you have it at the beginning before the day time people go home?

it’s statistically highly unlikely that everyone would need to use the loos at the same time. Fair enough have a policy that says that excessively frequent bathroom breaks will result in a discussion with HR, and that you should not loiter in the loos or deliberately go in groups, but to have to ask permission? Barbaric. Give human beings some credit, and free up the manager to do something more useful like organise team meetings within working hours.

This. I worked in a call centre about 30 years ago. If you wanted to go to the loo, you logged into break on the system and.....went to the loo. No permission required. I'm genuinely shocked.

@HotCrossBunplease not necessarily the toilet but say 1 person making a coffee, 1 going to the toilet, 1 dealing with emails, 1 on scheduled lunch and suddenly you're down to 2 people on the phone so we just have to be aware what everyone else is doing

I'd imagine not (I certainly couldn't, although I'd be less problematic on a weekend as it wouldn't matter so much if I woke DH up).

If they approve one WFH request then they have to approve them all and ultimately risk ending up with just one or two staff members in the office overnight, which sounds even bleaker than the bleak picture already painted.

Correct. But legal compliance is the baseline.

Re point 4 it’s not about demonstrating to the employer anymore.

The onus is now on the employer to provide a genuine business reason why this can’t happen.

Reasons that can’t be used:

• we don’t do that here
• it will set a precedent

Even cost to business now needs to be significant and detrimental, and citing travel and sustenance expenses for occasional office days is unlikely to be seen as a reason for declining.

We are likely to see a number of challenges at tribunal this year regarding flexible working, and I expect will be ruled in favour of the employee. It’s going to be very difficult for employers to justify declining an application unless there’s a reason that staff cannot work from home, eg roles that are directly customer facing, or physically hands on. For people who work primarily on phones and IT equipment - so the employee has the ability to work anywhere, businesses need to start preparing for this and adjusting their expectations of having this work done in an office or at a central location.

i think its weird thy let you all wfh on the weekend an refuse uring week-proves its not detrimental