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The WFH Policy That Was Still Misunderstood

A recent unsuccessful, unfair dismissal revealed two very different understandings of what the working arrangement allowed. For the individual, it was taken to mean that a fully remote role could continue from her home, even when that meant relocating from the UK to France. For the business, it meant working remotely from home within the UK. The disagreement eventually resulted in dismissal and an unsuccessful unfair dismissal claim.

Starting at the end

The Employment Tribunal concluded that the employer’s instruction requiring the individual to work from the UK was reasonable and the dismissal fell within the range of reasonable responses after the individual continued working from France despite being told that she could not do so.

The more interesting part sits beneath the outcome.

The answer existed

The employment contract identified the employee’s UK home as the principal place of work. It referred to UK employment requirements and was governed by the law of England and Wales. The Tribunal concluded that, read as a whole, the contractual arrangement contemplated working from home in the UK rather than a home in any location the individual chose.

Not policy perfect

The Tribunal still identified shortcomings in how the business’ position had been communicated. The overseas-working policy had not been specifically communicated to remote UK employees and was not relied upon as clearly as it might have been once the disagreement arose.
 
It is an important distinction because a business can have the answer somewhere without the people affected by it having the same understanding.

"The document can be right while clarity around the document is missing."

Confusing remote with location-independent

This case also exposes how easily familiar workplace language can carry assumptions that nobody has stopped to examine.
“Remote working.”
“Home working.”
“Flexible working.”
These phrases may sound self-explanatory until somebody acts upon a different interpretation. Remote working describes how work is performed. It does not automatically answer where that work may be performed from, whether another jurisdiction is permitted or what conditions attach to a change of location.

The business had legitimate concerns about the legal, tax and employment implications of permanently employing someone working from France under a UK arrangement. Meanwhile, the individual maintained their fully remote role allowed them to continue performing the same work from their new home.

The disagreement became about meaning.

Clarity does not require agreement

Policies, procedures and workplace expectations cannot guarantee that everyone will like the standard that has been set. Nor should that be the test.

Leadership responsibility lies in determining what the organisation requires, understanding why that requirement exists and making the conditions sufficiently clear for individuals to recognise what is expected of them and make informed decisions.

An employee retains autonomy too. They may question the boundary. They may seek an alternative or ultimately decide that the conditions no longer suit them. Clarity allows those choices to be made knowingly.

This is the work CAS Ltd focuses on. Looking beyond whether a policy exists to understand how the written standard is being understood, applied and experienced in practice.

The private mailing list continues that thinking with deeper reflections on policies, leadership responsibility and the conditions shaping the wider business ecosystem.

Winning does not remove the lesson

The business successfully defended the unfair dismissal claim. That does not mean there was nothing worth reviewing. A tribunal determines the legal dispute before it. A healthy business ecosystem can ask an earlier and slightly different question:

Where could uncertainty have been recognised before it became conflict?

This is where policies and procedures become more than documents stored in anticipation of something going wrong. 

The wording matters. Managers’ understanding its purpose matters. How the wording is communicated matters, including whether individuals can reasonably understand the boundaries within which they are expected to work.

An organisation should not need a dispute to discover that two people have been applying entirely different meanings to the same arrangement.

The policy may contain the answer. Leadership responsibility is ensuring that the answer is understood before somebody has to test where the boundary really sits.

"A healthy business ecosystem is one that HUMs."

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