'The impact is going to be significantly different if it's a return to office mandate for all employees or for some employees'
Remote work and return to work mandates have become a hotly disputed area for employers and workers, creating legal and management issues for HR leaders.
According to Aleksandra Pressey, partner at Williams HR Law, many of these problems could be avoided with a bit of foresight.
“It's possible to address an issue before it becomes a huge escalation,” she says.
“In an ideal situation, part of what an employer would do is set out the parameters of the remote working relationship,” she says. “For example: ‘The remote work is temporary or subject to reconsideration, and we reserve the right to recall you to the office'.”
These expectations should be laid out in a remote work agreement that clearly changes the employment terms without replacing the original employment contract.
But not many companies had the luxury of planning in 2020 when pandemic restrictions forced offices to go remote, and many employers “defaulted into a remote position," Pressey explains.
In these cases, workers hired during that period might assume their remote status is permanent.
“If there's not really any clear communication that the employer has the specific right to recall the employee, then there's a strong argument that the employer has accepted the remote work arrangement,” she says.
In this unclear space, abrupt policy shifts can come across as breaches of contract. And...
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