CULTURE AND CHANGE ANNE WILSON
Practical changes as a result of COVID-19 Anne Wilson, partner at Anthony Harper Lawyers, outlines how COVID-19 has changed the way we work and shares what changes, she believes, are here to stay.
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t is clear that COVID-19 has changed the way we work and these changes are likely to endure. The pandemic has accelerated a shift in working practices by forcing a large sector of employers to allow employees to work from home and more flexibly than they have ever worked before. In doing so, employers have had to place a high degree of trust in their employees, which in turn has often resulted in higher productivity and, for some, the ability to continue operating their businesses throughout the pandemic. As we move into a different phase of the pandemic, employers now have to consider to what extent they will require employees to return to the office and how they maintain the intangibles lost from a workforce physically separated from one another, such as workplace culture and communication. 16
HUMAN RESOURCES
AUTUMN 2022
In among this, as well as coping with a high degree of change, employers have had to grapple with vaccine mandates and, for non-mandated workplaces, introducing vaccine requirements, and will now need to consider the need for booster doses and testing regimes. So, from the perspective of the law, how can we mitigate the effect of these changes on HR practices to best position organisations for the future?
Working from home
By far the most impactful change from the pandemic has been the need for employees to work from home for extended periods. The ‘working from home’ revolution was anticipated to occur much earlier than 2020. In July 2008, the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Arrangements) Amendment Act came into force, giving employees a statutory right to request a variation of their working arrangements, including hours, days or work location. Under the legislation, employers have to respond to such a request within one month of receiving it but can refuse the request on a variety of grounds. The purpose of the amendments was to encourage employers to consider
flexible working arrangements, but, because employers could easily refuse a request, it didn’t result in any significant change in working practices. Many employers were stuck in the long-held ‘bums on seats’ culture and had no real need or incentive to divert from that. Flexible working and working from home arrangements remained the exception rather than the rule, other than for early adopters, such as the tech industries.
Burnout is much more likely when work is so accessible from home and employees are constantly tethered to their smart devices, resulting in blurred boundaries between work and home. The pandemic rapidly changed that. Employers were suddenly forced to adopt working from home and flexible arrangements across their entire workforces, including accommodating employees who had families at home during periods of lockdown. In addition, the pandemic coincided with improvements in technology that made working from
