It’s easy for remote working to become a HR panacea. It widens your talent pool. It can get you an equally qualified candidate for less money. It improves retention. A recent article from IBM UK CEO Sreeram Visvanathan in CityAM highlighted ONS research suggesting 85 per cent of UK workers want to maintain a hybrid approach when it comes to work culture.
But two recent pieces have highlighted the dangers of naively batting for remote working with your business leaders without considering the downsides, beyond those obvious drawbacks – younger workers are denied the training that the workplace offers; they also miss out on opportunities for building up working relationships, skills, and salaries. While it’s perfectly clear that no one is going to rise to the top from their bedroom, there are other negatives.
The first was research on the cost of hiring cyber security professionals. High-flying cyber professionals in the East Midlands have seen their asking salaries rise – particularly in Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Mansfield, Northampton and Nottingham – by over eight per cent in the last year. Average salaries have risen from £60,800 to £66,100 a year. In London, experienced candidates working in the right specialism have seen average packages rise to £80,900.
According to recruiter Randstad, who carried out the research, cyber-security is a booming sector in England as a result of remote working – employees working from home during the lockdowns made the job of keeping organisations’ IT infrastructure intact much harder. More than 50 per cent of decision makers in the IT community think remote workers will expose their organisation to the risk of a data breach. Remote working on a vast scale has been a major headache for IT security and that’s driven recruitment.
The second piece I saw was an article from an employment lawyer at Addleshaw Goddard on the possibility of remote working leading to a two-tier system and becoming a form, or a tool, of discrimination. Under the Equalities Act 2010, employers may not treat any employee less favourably compared to others because of a protected characteristic, including access to training and to career advancement (for example, pay and promotions). Most HR professionals are familiar with this – but few have considered how it might interplay with where you are based.
The author, Richard Yeomans, highlighted that women are more likely to have primary responsibility for childcare and prefer the flexibility offered by home working. This type of consensual remote working can lead to sex discrimination if those working from home miss out on work opportunities. In some areas this discrimination risk may be easier to monitor and manage but it may be trickier in others. “Visibility” in the office may mean those in offices find it easier to develop networks and are offered better work opportunities and career progression. Employers will need to be alive to this risk and how they create a level playing field for those working remotely.
What are HR managers to do about this? Well, nothing really. They will want to be fair and progressive and are enthusiastically championing hybrid working as part of this. But HR professionals need to be aware that hybrid working is not as straightforward as it appears. Policies and practices must clearly show how career progression is structured and how this fits in with home working. That will require investment. And more money will no doubt need to be spent beefing up your IT infrastructure, too. Hybrid working is not without its costs and HRs need to make their leadership teams aware of them. The alternative, no matter how well-intentioned, could be very costly indeed.
