Flexible working policies are likely to be unavoidable for travel firms following the Covid pandemic, say HR and legal experts.
Increasing numbers of employers are now offering ‘hybrid’ business models which allow staff a mix of working in the office and from home after 14 months of national lockdowns.
Speaking at C&M Travel Recruitment’s Get Set For Travel webinar, businesses were told staff and new starters now expected their employers to offer a level of flexible working.
HR and talent professional Claire Steiner said the pandemic had “fundamentally changed the way businesses work”.
She said: “Businesses are going to be hard-pressed now to say no to hybrid working because it’s been proved to work.”
TravLaw partner Ami Naru stressed employees do not have “an automatic right” to work from home under current law – they must have the consent of their employer.
But she also admitted: “Employers will find it a little bit more difficult to push these requests back because people have proved it can work.”
C&M Recruitment director Barbara Kolosinska said most companies were already offering some level of flexible working “because most candidates expect it when they go for a job”.
This might not be working from home, it could be job-sharing opportunities or working at different hours. “I know of businesses thinking about [moving to] four day weeks where you do five days in four,” she said, adding that employers offering flexible policies attracted a wider pool of applicants for job vacancies.
But Steiner warned that employers would have to ensure home workers were treated equally, and highlighted the danger of mental health issues if staff at home put in longer hours to prove they were working because they could not be ‘seen’ in the office.
“As it [working from home] becomes long-term and formal, managers and business leaders will need training on how to support people in hybrid environments,” she added.
Naru added there were “a lot of processes to be put in place” as companies adjusted to allowing staff to work from home.
She said: “How do you do appraisals if people are not in the office? How do you onboard staff if they are not there? A lot of processes need to be ironed out for working from home if it is going to be here for the long term.”