Hybrid working

Due to the Corona crisis, which required people to work from home, working from home has taken flight. Before March 2020, working from home was just something that was done occasionally. Now it is almost impossible to imagine our daily working lives without it. The combination of working from home and working on site, also referred to as "hybrid working", is particularly popular among employers and employees. The Social and Economic Council ("SER") has also issued an advisory report on this subject. But is hybrid working really so great? And is there a catch? You can read about it in this article.

Is the employee entitled to hybrid work?

Currently, an employee may request to work somewhere else on the basis of the Flexible Working Act. A request to be allowed to work from home, or work from home more often, falls within the scope of changes to the workplace. The workplace is then changed from the office to the home.

An employee must request such a change of workplace from their employer by no later than two months before the date on which they want the change to enter into effect. The employer must consider such a request, but is not required to agree to it. If the employer rejects the request, it must discuss the rejection with the employee.

Should this change in the future?

An employee can also ask the employer to work more or fewer hours, or to work different hours. The Flexible Working Act stipulates that an employer may only reject such a request from an employee if it has compelling interests that make it impossible to grant the request.

The government believes that this criterion should also apply to a request to work from home. That is why the "Work Where You Want" bill has been introduced. If this bill is passed into law, a request to work from home may no longer be rejected unless an employer has compelling reasons for doing so. This would more or less creates a right to work from home.

Is it possible to oblige an employee to work at home?

The workplace is considered to be an employment condition. The employment contract (or CLA) often specifies the workplace. An employer is not allowed simply to change this. An employee must first agree to this. If the employee disagrees, the employer can only change the workplace if this is necessary. And that is not something that can be done easily.

The employer must in that case first weigh its interests against those of its employee(s). An employee who lives with eight housemates and has no place of his own to work cannot reasonably be forced to work from home. However, this may be different if an employee indicates that they have a study room where they have sufficient space to work from home.

During the corona pandemic, an employer could use the right to issue instructions to temporarily require its employees to work from home. This was considered a reasonable instruction because it was imposed by the government.

Challenges for employers in hybrid work

Under the Working Conditions Act, employers are obliged to ensure the well-being of their employees. This obligation also applies to employees who work from home. An employer must therefore provide an adequate home office, for example by providing a desk and an office chair.

An employer must also ensure that its employees' psychosocial workload remains limited. Some employees find it difficult to maintain a good work-life balance when they are working from home. An employer must be able to prevent this. Conversely, the employer's working hours may be blurred by working from home a lot. Examples might include e-mails or phone calls from the manager outside office hours.

In order to curb this, a bill has been introduced which should secure the right to be inaccessible. There is a good chance that this law will not be passed, because employers already have a duty to take employees' psychosocial workload into account. This bill will have a benefit, however, in the form of prompting employers and employees to look more critically at accessibility outside working hours.

Tips for employers on hybrid working

Keep in touch with employees who work from home. This can be done, for example, by scheduling a weekly coffee date where there is time to catch up. A workday morning ritual that involves all the employees of a given team might also be an effective way to keep in touch.
Draw up a Work from Home Policy. Such a policy will enable you to offer facilities such as a suitable desk or a properly adjusted office chair and make employees aware of the need for an adequate home office.
Talk to each other about wishes and challenges of working from home. This can be done as a team or individually. As an employer, you could also discuss this as a regular topic during performance reviews.