Working from home: things you need to consider

Earlier this week, Sophie Gould, our Head of Learning & Development at F-LEX, chaired another fantastic COVID-19 virtual session for GCs and Senior in-house lawyers in collaboration with LexisNexis UK and Radius Law.  

What General Counsel are telling us on these calls

In this week’s icebreaker poll attendees decided that burgers were the ‘must have’ BBQ food!

In other polls, 66% of attendees said that over 100 employees in their organisations were working from home.

And 47% voted that they were likely to close or reduce office spaces and increase working from home in light of Covid-19 and the increase in numbers of employees working from home.

Home working: arrangements, risks and legalities

Sandra Martins, Senior Solicitor at Radius Law, provided an excellent summary of the arrangements necessary for home working as we work towards coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic. The key issues that Sandra raised for our GC attendees to consider are as follows:

Discrimination: When introducing policies related to returning to work be weary of imposing a policy or measure that disadvantages a particular group with protected characteristics and be ready to objectively justify such policies legally.

Health and Safety: Think about the health and safety perspective of working from home. This may mean carrying out risk assessments, which given the rules introduced through Covid-19 will mean asking employees to carry out their own risk assessments and educating them on how to do so. 

The risk of data and confidential information: Consideration of what you can access and how you dispose of it from a working from home environment is also important. For example ensuring that employees have access to a shredder to dispose of confidential documents may be something your company must facilitate. Click here for some further tips on cybersecurity whilst working from home.

Mental Health: Providing employees with good mental health support whilst they continue to work from home is also essential. Without the comraderie and social engagement in an office it is easy for employees to feel isolated. Offering support as an organisation and checking in with employees will help to mitigate this.

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