As a recap: my agency rolled out an replace to our hybrid work coverage that allowed for as much as two WFH days per week, however the requirement to work three days in workplace needed to be met first, and couldn’t be prorated for shorter weeks. In different phrases, a five-day week allowed for as much as two WFH days, however a four-day vacation week solely allowed one WFH day, and per week through which we labored three days or much less required all working days to be in workplace. Violations of the coverage can be flagged up three administration ranges, and rapid managers didn’t have authority to override the requirement. I’ve a standing weekly medical appointment that’s tough to accommodate when working in workplace, however extraordinarily simple to accommodate when WFH. I requested my supervisor how you can deal with it for three-day weeks, since I can fairly anticipate a handful of these per 12 months attributable to volunteer actions, and he referred me to HR, which resulted within the clownshoes nonsense from my authentic publish.
Once I up to date within the feedback proper after you revealed my letter, the corporate had amended the coverage in order that it might solely depend as a violation if we accrued a sure variety of weeks out of adherence inside a rolling two-month interval. I additionally discovered that I used to be removed from the one worker elevating a hue and cry over the coverage, and that at the least a portion of why it was so poorly dealt with for me was defined by the deluge of workers swamping your complete HR division in screaming panic.
Since then, I discovered that the explanation our coverage was so rigidly framed was attributable to our business’s regulatory obligations. I work in a tightly regulated business, and areas the place enterprise is routinely carried out should be registered with our regulator. Areas the place supervisory exercise (i.e., my job) are carried out want an extra degree of registration past the baseline. Throughout the pandemic, the regulator had relaxed the rule with the understanding that almost everybody can be working from residence and that submitting the house deal with of each single worker and supervisor of each single agency within the nation can be a large drawback for everyone concerned. Nevertheless, they have been starting to tighten up the coverage once more, and had rolled out necessities for each what number of days a 12 months and what number of days labored per 12 months would require a WFH or hybrid employee’s residence to be registered as a residential place of work. My agency was making an attempt to sculpt their coverage in order that they’d a pool of recognized workers whose residence addresses would should be registered (reminiscent of full-time WFHers) and everybody else whose houses wouldn’t be registered and thus needed to stay inside the limits outlined by the regulator. I don’t completely comply with the mathematics on how our coverage suits inside the regulators’ define, however I’ve a superb working relationship with that space of compliance, and I do belief them to be doing their finest to stability worker wants, purpose, and regulation.
(And as a facet observe — since we’re in a regulated business and I work in a supervisory/compliance space, the idea of asking forgiveness slightly than permission is just not relevant. If I merely stated nothing and labored from residence in extra of coverage, it might be detected and the dearth of proactive dialogue would weigh towards me.)
Additionally, with regard to the extremely condescending HR “advocate,” I had the displeasure of attending a gathering on a piece subject that additionally concerned him. Throughout the assembly, he took it upon himself to elucidate in small phrases to certainly one of our company legal professionals the idea of an “allegation” of improper exercise vs proof of stated exercise (in relation to a situation through which the worker beneath investigation had already fessed up and tendered his resignation). So I’m fairly properly glad that his angle was not particularly towards me as an accommodation-seeker, however is genuinely his default strategy to the world. One wonders what his conferences together with his boss are like.
I admire your response affirming that this actually wasn’t an superior course of but additionally that I doubtless didn’t have a lot safety, in addition to the commentariat’s suggestions!
