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 every week by which we labored three days or much less required all working days to be in workplace. Violations of the coverage could be flagged up three administration ranges, and fast managers didn’t have authority to override the requirement. I’ve a standing weekly medical appointment that’s troublesome to accommodate when working in workplace, however extraordinarily simple to accommodate when WFH. I requested my supervisor find out how to deal with it for three-day weeks, since I can moderately anticipate a handful of these per 12 months because of volunteer actions, and he referred me to HR, which resulted within the clownshoes nonsense from my authentic submit.
Once I up to date within the feedback proper after you printed my letter, the corporate had amended the coverage in order that it could solely rely 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 the complete HR division in screaming panic.
Since then, I discovered that the rationale our coverage was so rigidly framed was because of our business’s regulatory obligations. I work in a tightly regulated business, and places the place enterprise is routinely carried out have to 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. Through the pandemic, the regulator had relaxed the rule with the understanding that just about everybody could be working from dwelling and that submitting the house handle of each single worker and supervisor of each single agency within the nation could be a large downside for everyone concerned. Nonetheless, 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 dwelling to be registered as a residential office. My agency was making an attempt to sculpt their coverage in order that they’d a pool of identified workers whose dwelling addresses would have to be registered (similar to full-time WFHers) and everybody else whose houses wouldn’t be registered and thus needed to stay throughout the limits outlined by the regulator. I don’t fully observe the maths on how our coverage suits throughout the regulators’ define, however I’ve a very good working relationship with that space of compliance, and I do belief them to be doing their greatest to stability worker wants, purpose, and regulation.
(And as a aspect observe — since we’re in a regulated business and I work in a supervisory/compliance space, the idea of asking forgiveness reasonably than permission just isn’t relevant. If I merely mentioned nothing and labored from dwelling in extra of coverage, it could be detected and the shortage of proactive dialogue would weigh in opposition to me.)
Additionally, with regard to the extremely condescending HR “advocate,” I had the displeasure of attending a gathering on a piece difficulty that additionally concerned him. Through the assembly, he took it upon himself to clarify in small phrases to one in every of our company legal professionals the idea of an “allegation” of improper exercise vs proof of mentioned exercise (in relation to a state of affairs by which the worker below investigation had already fessed up and tendered his resignation). So I’m fairly nicely glad that his perspective was not particularly in opposition to me as an accommodation-seeker, however is genuinely his default strategy to the world. One wonders what his conferences along with his boss are like.
I admire your response affirming that this actually wasn’t an superior course of but additionally that I possible didn’t have a lot safety, in addition to the commentariat’s suggestions!