Change in work location

[WanttoFindWorkLifeBalance]

I have an employment agreement that outlines that I work from home on one specific day of the week and from the office remainder of the time. I've just had a new agreement sent to me (which I was told was just to changes in IP clauses etc) however within, it now states I'm office based all the time. Hopefully this is just an error which they will correct however if it's not, what are my rights? Can they just change my contract and remove the work from home day? Thanks

How long have you worked there? Has there been any changes in the business recently which means that you would have to be in the office full time?

Who told you it was minor changes? Can you go back to that person and say there has been a mistake in the redrafted contract and you'll sign it when it's corrected? It could be a genuine mistake.

If they correct it and send you a new one, it might be worth initialling every page and taking a photocopy before you give it back, just in case they knew what they were doing and were trying to pull a fast one. That would prevent them from replacing the page that deals with work location.

Things like this are much more likely to be human error / incompetence than conspiracy / planned.

Thanks everyone and yes, hopefully genuine mistake - will talk to hr. Just want to be prepped in case not!

Depends if working from home was a permanent change to your contract or something that is open to review. How long have you been doing it? The organisation has a right to change it if it no longer meets their business need but they would need to consult with you and give notice of the change. Hopefully it is an admin error!

I think ours would count as office-based as you do most of your work there - there has been a lot of discussion over this, as some departments are now hot-desking, others aren't, but it's been pointed out if you're only in the office one or two days a week, you can't justify a permanent desk. It also affects whether you can claim expenses (you can't for your main place of work or home, but you can for other sites.)

Last time they did something like this at work, most people got the default contract, and HR had to sort out the differences they'don't overlooked, so you probably just need to talk to them and hope they're a bit more efficient than ours... (To be fair, they have improved in the last couple of years or so.)