Remote Work As Remote As Ever
According to a recent Financial Times article. EY has started monitoring UK staff office attendance with turnstile data. See EY starts monitoring UK staff office attendance with turnstile data (ft.com)
A few months ago I finished a contract with a US/Irish company with offices in Dublin. The offices are spacious and beautiful (certainly trendy) and probably among the nicest in the city, but, importantly, I wasn't obliged to use them. I did occasionally anyway. If I lived in Dublin, I'd happily have gone in a few times a week. Go ahead, log my turnstile use. It's worth it for the free canteen alone. Finishing the contract left me in a very difficult position. In what I do, the best work opportunities are usually in Dublin. That’s just a fact.
Unfortunately, after all the ‘give me remote or give me death’ stuff, a lot of major companies have shifted to operating strict hybrid models. This is better than the old model of ‘in the office, or else’. But it’s a far cry from the future of remote work that was promised when we were all locked up at home, growing our hair out.
And it’s not quite what seemed to have been on the cards when the Irish government decided to get involved and write some legislation to go with its aspirations.
The Hybrid Monster
Hybrid policies in Dublin largely defeat the purpose of remote work, which doesn’t just mean ‘work from home; or ‘work from home now and then’. It’s a much bigger concept. Remote work is about decentralising the economy and allowing workers to access high-quality jobs without having to relocate.
Again, let me provide some personal experience here. A couple of months ago I had to stop an interview process for a 6-month senior content management and writing role when the nice girl on the end of the line told me that the company operates a strict 4-day-a-week hybrid model. Which isn't hybrid. It’s like some weird, oddly shaped version of hybrid working; ‘casual Friday at home’, or something.
The role wasn't even in Dublin. It was just 'up that direction'. We chatted for a bit and I felt it was a good call. Friendly but serious HR screening stuff. I was the first person she had phoned that morning and judging by my CV, which I had fired off without doing any tinkering, I was a shoo-in or as close to a shoo-in as they were likely to find. We ended the conversation agreeing that it was a shame, but there was no point taking the application any further as the company was just not open to compromise.
Even 2 days a week would make going to Dublin remotely doable for me, but most hybrid policies now are 3 days in office, 2 days at home. The brain drain from the rest of the country is almost inevitable. High achievers (or just aspiring workers; the type of people that make up the top 20% in any company) who can’t find remote work are forced to move to Dublin or to desist in their efforts to find a well-paying, intellectually satisfying job.
Good jobs are damn hard to find. Good remote jobs are gold dust. Little nuggets of platinum, even. No matter how good you are, if you can’t move to Dublin, unless you hit the remote work lottery, you’re probably going to end up accepting dreggier1 work in the low-lying fruit zone.
Legislation From Hell
So, who's at fault for this remote work rewind?
The government. Specifically Leo Varadkar, who promised to take this one made a pig’s dinner effort of the details. (Or his team did.) I wrote about this topic during the pandemic. See my Substack article: The Pandemic Files, where you can find the links to where the articles were published elsewhere. I wrote -
"The outcome is proposed legislation that makes work from home, not so much a right in itself, but something that you have the right to request. Crucially, the legislation will give companies the right to refuse."
It’s even worse. You don't get the right to request to work from home until you've been in the company for six months or more - which gives absolutely no hope to anyone looking for a job and hoping to negotiate to work remotely from the start.
For a summary of this legislative crock, head to the Citizens Advice page: Working from home (citizensinformation.ie)
Once commenced, all employees will have a legal right to request remote working if the following conditions are met:
You have 6 months’ continuous service with your employer
You submit the request at least 8 weeks before the date you intend to start the new arrangement
(For even greater detail head here: gov - Tánaiste publishes Remote Working Strategy (www.gov.ie).)
Frankly, the government missed an opportunity to make remote work a right up front. What the legislation provides is a mechanism for what you could already do if you could write an email to your manager. Lots of companies have been offering remote jobs for years. (My first writing jobs in IT were remote. That’s why I got into it.)
Fitting with the rest of the junk legislation is the ‘right to disconnect’. Again, the right to disconnect is something we have always had as part of our basic workers’ rights. Unless it’s built into your contract, no company expects a 24-hour SLA from the average worker.
The Result
The remote work legislation is a case of ‘be seen to do something’. And, yup, they did something. They screwed it up.
The result is some of the worst workers’ legislation ever, massively weighted in favour of employers, and doing the total opposite of what was promised.
The legislation codifies a company’s right to refuse remote work on any grounds, whilst ensuring that you do not have the ‘right’ to work from home at all. Or at least no more right to do so than before. You now have the right to request something which they now have the right to refuse.
GS
What's dreggy work? It’s pretty subjective, but here’s my definition. Any environment where there is a culture of cliquishness and where there’s an atmosphere of tension and slavish devotion to pretending to work. The work itself is repetitive and mind-destroying for anyone with any imagination or soul. Oh, and chronically bad pay.