Hybrid working & Equipment

[6789Advice]

I work for a very large company.

The current company policy is that we need be on the premises a few days a week and can be called to come in for business reasons including at short notice Etc.

My divisional policy is that we must work a minimum of 20% of contract in the office, additional time is voluntary and we are formally trialing hybrid working and it means the office is hotdesking.

I need specialist equipment on health grounds including a chair because their standard office chairs do not fit me as per DSE requirements. So obviously I have my chair at home.

As we are formally trialing hybrid working and that working more than 20% in the office is voluntary (and their isn't a business case for me to go in such as meetings etc I'm just back office staff) would it be discriminatory for them to refuse to provide a 2nd chair?

As an aside I am registered disabled and I cannot genuinely use the standard chairs as they cause me pain but that isn't related to my disability more to the fact they don't fit me at all.

Thank you, I was beginning to think I was being unreasonable asking for one, certainly safety seemed to think they didn't need to provide another one. It's being an uphill battle.

Either you need one or you don’t. If you do need one, you need one in all locations they require you to work. If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t need one at all.

From the limited info I would say you need two chairs. Have you or your employer looked into whether Access to Work (DWP) would fund a chair for home? This way you would always have one at home regardless of employer.

The other option is for work to pay to transport your chair between home and work each week - point out the cost of this and they may see the benefit of a second chair.

In my workplace (large corporate) you would have equipment in both places, what you couldn’t do is stop someone sitting on your chair when you weren’t in the office.

You would book the desk out as normal in advance of your office day, and leave a note on the desk asking that the desk is left free on say Tuesday as you had a requirement for that workstation and not to move the chair.

We’re all very much geared up to this type of working in my company, but we’ve been hot desking and home working for decades.

The way it works on my organisation is the same as it worked pre-pandemic.

Someone with a RA in place has an allocated desk and chair in the office, to meet their specialist need. The employee makes sure that every week they put a notice on their desk to state the day/s they need the desk and chair that week, plus the following week. They also put a notice asking people not to adjust their chair if it's a special one for disability. In this case, people just move the chair to the side and use a different chair.

@6789Advice

Well if they won't provide another chair my only option would be to stand all day on office days 🤷🏽‍♀️

Have you considered applying for Access to Work funding for a 2nd chair to enable you to work from home some of the time?

A colleague got this for a client.