In principle, it is the employer who decides where the work will be performed, and the workplace must be specified in the employment contract. However, it is entirely possible to describe a flexibility where, for example, it is permitted – or even desirable – for employees to work partly from home or elsewhere.
What is desirable in the individual company will vary greatly, both based on the company's size and organization, what services and products it delivers and what culture it wants to develop. Through the right to manage, the employer has quite a lot of room for maneuver to establish and develop appropriate working methods, at the same time it is smart to facilitate flexible solutions and listen to the employees' own wishes.
The coronavirus pandemic has taught us that it is technologically possible to work remotely, but still together, in many more situations than we previously thought was practically possible. With that lesson in mind, we now have to figure out how we want to work together, what degree of individual freedom we should allow, and how we can simultaneously safeguard our own corporate culture and good solutions for collaboration. Because there is no doubt that collaboration is still important in most work situations.
Here are some tips for making the right choices for your business:
- Neither the employer nor the employee can impose/require the use of a home office unless it is agreed in the employment contract.
- Show respect for the individual's own wishes, both in terms of working methods and risk of infection
- Open to dialogue, both with the individual and with the group
- Home offices often provide peace and the opportunity to work concentratedly on your own.
- If many people are working from home, the social and professional community is reduced. The choices that individuals make will therefore also affect their colleagues and the group.
- The collegial community, the chat around the coffee machine and the opportunity to stick your head in each other's doors, have the best conditions in the office.
- Arrange for chat rooms and other meeting points if many people are in different locations
- Find a good balance between giving trust, but at the same time having sufficient control over when and where the individual works
- Feel free to divide the week into fixed office days and open flexi days.
- As long as there is still a risk of infection, ensure that the office is as well-equipped as possible to maintain social distancing and other risk-reducing measures.
- Be open and inform about the choices, measures and guidance you provide, and why.
- Provide written information to employees about what the «new normal» will be like, and take into account that it may also change in the future. This is groundbreaking work for most people and we learn through experience.
Most employers who allow home office work offer this as a voluntary arrangement and then for so-called short-term or occasional work. However, if it is agreed that home office will be used as a more permanent and/or permanent arrangement, it is mandatory Regulations on work performed in the employee's home that an individual agreement should be concluded regarding this, in addition to the ordinary employment contract.
Such an agreement shall, among other things, regulate the scope of home work, working hours, availability, duration, maintenance and security of equipment, documents and information, as well as working environment conditions.
