If you are an office-based employee, your pay, annual leave, sick leave, pension, hours of work, staff appraisal and all other contractual arrangements should remain unchanged when moving to homebased working.
If you are starting a new role that involves homeworking, your terms and conditions should be the same as those your colleagues enjoy, regardless of whether they are also homeworkers or are office-based.
Employees tend to differentiate between contractual and occasional homeworking.
If you are a designated homeworker, a contractual variation specifying your position as a homeworker is likely to give you additional protections. It is also likely that the nature of your homeworking arrangement needs to be spelled out.
Employers should produce clear homeworking policies and regularly monitor their effectiveness, in consultation with union representatives.
Some of the issues to be considered in a homeworking agreement are:
- flexible working
- homeworking designated by your employer
- the money the employer saves if you work from home
- contributing to utility costs
- provision of office equipment
- ensuring career development plans remain in place
- maintaining contact with your line manager and team
- duration of homeworking
- data protection.
For more information on this, members can download our full guide to homeworking.
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