Working from home - how would you play this? (long, sorry...).

[StrawberryAddict]

Hello

I'd be grateful for some help and advice. First a bit of background...

I work for a medium sized multi-national company. I was originally employed 5 years ago to work solely for the UK branch and was based in the UK office, then 3 years ago my responsibilities were increased to cover Europe and I have been line-managed through our HQ in France ever since. I still remained on a UK contract and remained officially based in the same office in the UK HQ although I worked from home most of the time travelling to France or elsewhere in Europe as needed from time to time. I probably used my UK office one day a week, with 3 days a week or more at home. My employment contract states I am office based however.

I am currently on maternity leave.

OK, so that's the background. Here's the issue.

Last week our HR manager sent me an email to tell me that my office in the UK was going to be allocated to somebody else (permanently) and I must clear out my things by the end of May. She told me I am welcome to hot desk in the UK office as needed when I return to work and they would provide me some very limited storage but no office would be provided for me.

In some ways this is unwelcome news - it will be a bit embarrassing to return from maternity leave and no longer have the status required to have an office. Plus I have a huge volume of documents in my office that I need access to on a regular basis.

But in other ways I think this news could play to my advantage. Even though my contract says I am office based, I have worked from home 90% of the time over the last 4 years and it would really suit my circumstances (with a young baby in a local nursery) if I officially worked from home on my return to work.

Another issue is that I am scared to make too big a deal of this or my company may just decide I must relocate to France and work out of our HQ there - which I wouldn't want to do. So really I want to do the least possible so this stays under the radar of the big bosses.

So a couple of questions...

1. do you think it reasonable to remove my entitlement to an office like this while I am on maternity leave?

2. should I just do as they ask and go and clear my office out without doing/saying anything else and assume this leaves me offically working from home? Or do I need to raise that this changes the terms of my employment and my contract should be changed accordingly?

3. even though my contract says I am office based, after working from home 90% of the time over the last 4 years (I have timesheets to demonstrate this) if this blows up into a big issue could I argue that despite what it says in my contract, it has become custom and practice that I work from home most of the time?

How would everyone approach this to try and meet my goal of officially being based at home, with the minimum fuss possible.

I think it is fair enough that you don't have an office if you only use it one day a week. But I would then want to officially be a home based worker so that you could claim the allowance for heating/electricity etc, plus get work to pay for desk/chair/broadband etc.

I didn't have a new contract when I went to being homebased, but am an official homebased worker iyswim - it was just an HR thing.

1. Yes. Assuming the fact that you are on mat leave isn't relevant, if you are only there one day a week, an office sounds unnecessary.

2. I would, yes.

3. Yes it would be established as part of your terms and conditions that you work from home. So if you want to achieve that with minimum fuss and are concerned that raising it might cause it to be taken away, then just remove yourself as requested, safe in the knowledge that should it be challenged, the fact that it's not written down doesn't mean it isn't contractual.

Thanks CMOT.

That's really where I want to get to, it being official enough to entitle me to claim for broadband, heating etc. and official enough for me to rely on it for childcare arrangements. But with the minimum fuss.

Great. Thanks Flowery.

I will just do that then and see what happens when I submit my first expenses claim for home working related expenses when I return to work

The only other thing I would say is that there are others who use their offices much less than I do and they are officially field based rather than office based, yet it's me that's being turfed out. So I have a strong suspicion that if I wasn't on maternity leave I wouldn't be being asked to move out. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I am not about to raise it if you think that their action means I could legitimately now consider myself to be based at home.