The question of when working from home is acceptable \u2013 and when you really should be at an office desk \u2013 is becoming one of modern life\u2019s conundrums.<\/p>\n
An employment tribunal has suggested it may be OK to remain at home if you need to supervise workers, even if it means attending an important meeting remotely.<\/p>\n
The thorny issue surfaced during a hearing into the case of an IT director who requested to attend a meeting by video call because gardeners were doing work at his home.<\/p>\n
His boss was upset and questioned whether he was treating the meeting seriously, but the tribunal said his decision to stay at home did not constitute \u201cblameworthy\u201d behaviour.<\/p>\n
The tribunal in Croydon, south London, heard that Ben Wicken had been scheduled to meet the managing director of the IT services company Akita Systems, Christophe Boudet, in person to attempt to resolve a disagreement.<\/p>\n
Wicken asked if he could attend a mediation meeting on Teams. The tribunal ruling said: \u201cThe claimant [Wicken] called Mr Boudet and asked if they could move the meeting to a Teams meeting and change the time \u2026 as he needed to work from home for the rest of the week because he had work being done in the garden and so he would need to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boudet was said to be \u201cvery disappointed\u201d and told Wicken that it appeared he was not taking the process seriously, the tribunal was told.<\/p>\n
At a follow-up mediation meeting, an external human resources professional questioned Wicken\u2019s desire to prioritise working from home to \u201csort out\u201d his gardeners rather than going into the office for the one-to-one meeting.<\/p>\n
Initially, the tribunal heard, Wicken could not understand what he had done wrong but then conceded \u201cin hindsight\u201d he should have communicated better with Boudet.<\/p>\n
Wicken felt \u201cattacked\u201d at the meeting and told Boudet he thought he was \u201cundervalued\u201d before breaking down in tears. The human resources professional later told him the directors of the company had lost trust and confidence in him, and he resigned the following month.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The tribunal found fault in elements of the way Wicken\u2019s case had been handled and said it amounted to unfair dismissal.<\/p>\n The employment judge Lisa Burge added that Wicken had not contributed to his dismissal.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cThe respondent [Akita] submits that the claimant admitted that his decision to prioritise arrangements with his gardener over attendance at a one-to-one mediation follow-up meeting was a mistake and that he refused to cooperate with the grievance investigation.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, these actions, in the context of the facts found and detailed, do not constitute \u2018culpable or blameworthy\u2019 conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The question of when working from home is acceptable \u2013 and when you really should be at an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[84,1371,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-9328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jobs","tag-business","tag-jobs","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}