Remote Working
Section outline
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For the purposes of this course, ‘homeworking’ (and ‘working from home) means and includes:
a) Occasional homeworking:
i) to complete a particular task, when working away from the office may assist in facilitating an environment where uninterrupted focus on tasks or duties can be better achieved and promote better productivity
ii) in response to a family emergency (for example where a dependant, such as a child or other relative needs care at short notice)
iii) where a temporary injury (e.g. a broken leg) makes travel to and from our usual place of work difficult
iv) where there is short-term travel disruption and it would be a more productive use of your time to remain at home and perform your contractual duties there
b) Part-time homeworking where we have agreed in writing that you may perform some or all of your contractual duties from home, and
c) Full-time homeworking, potentially, where your contract with White Label Crowdfunding permits you to be remotely located and to perform your contractual duties from home.
‘Homeworking’ does not include working from other remote locations, such as coffee shops. These locations place the security of our data and its confidentiality at risk. White Label Crowdfunding Limited specifically excludes permission to work from these locations under the terms of this homeworking policy. (For the avoidance of any doubt, however, you may on occasion, where appropriate and in the ordinary course of your contractual duties, meet with customers and other business parties in such locations and at their request. You are expected to comply with our infosec policy.)
If we agree to you working from home, you must comply with this policy. Failure to comply with this policy may lead to action being taken by White Label Crowdfunding Limited against you, under our Disciplinary Policy, which in the case of serious breaches, may result in your dismissal from the business on grounds of gross misconduct.
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All White Label Crowdfunding Limited employees and anyone else working for White Label Crowdfunding Limited, including consultants, contractors, volunteers, interns, casual and agency workers.
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This policy course is not part of your employment contract. We, White Label Crowdfunding Limited, may amend this course at any time.
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You may work from home when permitted to do so by:
a) the terms of your contract with White Label Crowdfunding Limited and/or
b) your line manager or HR department agreeing that you may do so, where, in their view:
i) you have work that can properly be carried out by you at home
ii) you working from home is cost-effective or cost-neutral for White Label Crowdfunding Limited
iii) there is minimal to no disruption caused to your colleagues or to White Label Crowdfunding Limited by you carrying out this work at home, and
iv) there are no factors relating to your performance or conduct that might cast reasonable doubt on the appropriateness of you homeworking in the requested circumstances, and
c) the conditions set out in this policy
Additionally, unless your employment contract with us entitles you to work from home from the outset of our employment relationship, you must have passed your probation period to be eligible to request homeworking.
Where you are permitted to work from home and this is an additional arrangement to what is set out in your employment contract with White Label Crowdfunding Limited will ensure that this new, permitted homeworking arrangement is appropriately recorded through the Hubstaff screen recording application.
Permission to work from home may be granted in relation to a specified time period, trial period, or indefinitely, and while we will carefully consider all requests to work from home, there is no obligation on White Label Crowdfunding Limited to say yes to any request for homeworking. Any request for homeworking must be compatible with the needs of our business as well as your needs and not all roles or tasks relating to them are suitable for homeworking. You must comply at all times with the terms of this policy.
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It is your duty to ensure that you comply with the obligations and responsibilities set out in this policy if we consent to you working from home.
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a) You must not work from home unless you have specifically been authorised to do so by your employment contract or by our express permission, according to the terms of this policy. In exceptional cases, your line manager OR HR department may agree to ‘emergency’, short term and one-off cases of homeworking too. These situations are still covered, to the greatest extent possible, by the terms of this policy.
b) If you are ever unsure about the scope or terms of this policy or any homeworking permission that we have granted to you, please contact your line manager or alternatively HR department as soon as possible, so that they can assist you.
c) Unless you have been specifically authorised to do so, you must not deviate from the terms of our consent, including, for example, your working hours, the circumstances of your required attendance on our premises for particular purposes, your treatment of equipment, data and confidentiality, your insurance and health and safety commitments and your availability to White Label Crowdfunding Limited personnel and others with whom we work, who rely on you to perform your duties so that they can successfully perform theirs.
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a) You must keep secure and inaccessible to others, all data and materials used by you while homeworking for us. We are entitled to request evidence of your security arrangements and to visit your home, if we consider it to be necessary, to satisfy ourselves of the suitability of your security arrangements. Not keeping our data, materials and any equipment on which they are stored secure and protected is likely to be treated by us as a disciplinary offence in accordance with our disciplinary policy
b) Unless you have been expressly permitted to do otherwise, you must only use equipment which we have provided, or authorised you to use
c) You have read, understand and agree to comply at all times with our policies covering computer use, electronic communications, social media and data security, and you agree also to ensure that you regularly refresh yourself on their most current content and requirements
d) If you have any concerns or suspicions about the security of any of our data (or data belonging to our customers, employees or anyone else working with or connected to us), or if you discover an incident that compromises the security of these data, you must immediately report this to your line manager.
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e) If we agree to provide you with any equipment as part of your homeworking arrangements, you must:
i) use that equipment to perform your contractual duties to White Label Crowdfunding Limited only
ii) take proper and reasonable care of that equipment, treating it as it is intended to be handled and in accordance with any relevant operating instructions and/or our policies and procedures
iii) not leave it unattended in any state where it could be used, removed or accessed by anyone else except for persons authorised by White Label Crowdfunding Limited
iv) keep it secure and in conditions appropriate to its optimum operating state, and
v) hand it over for collection by us when requested to do so.
f) You are responsible for ensuring that you have all the right equipment and conditions for homeworking, so that you are able to do your job properly, efficiently and on a timely basis. We will not be responsible for the maintenance, replacement or repair of any equipment if you do not take care of it or handle it as set out in paragraph 2(d) immediately above.
g) We will also not be responsible for any loss or damage to any of your personal equipment that you decide to use when working for us. You should check your personal insurance arrangements to provide for appropriate levels of cover before your homeworking arrangements start.
h) Your associated costs of homeworking, such as utility bills for electricity, heating, telephony and internet access are not our responsibility and you will be expected to cover these costs yourself.
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i) When you are working at or from your home, according to the arrangements that we have agreed with you and in compliance with this policy, you will be covered by our White Label Crowdfunding Limited accident insurance policy. Any accidents that occur while you are homeworking must be reported by you immediately according to the procedure contained in our Health and Safety policy.
j) Your duties in ensuring health and safety compliance are the same at home as they are on our premises. This means that:
i) You must take care of your own health and safety and you must take care of the health and safety of anyone else who might be affected by your homeworking activities, including anyone who visits your home during the course of your performing your duties
ii) You must ensure that you have read and understood our health and safety at work policies and procedures so that you are equipped to safely maintain your home and your equipment responsibly at all times and you are working sensibly, (including in relation to your hours) so that you do not place your own health at risk
iii) If we ask to visit your home to conduct a health and safety risk assessment, you must permit us reasonable access to ensure a proper assessment can be undertaken. (Our need for any such inspection will depend on the arrangements that we have agreed with you.)
iv) You must not provide customers, suppliers, or any other external parties to White Label Crowdfunding Limited with your home address or home telephone contact details.
v) You must report immediately to White Label Crowdfunding Limited any health and safety concerns or queries regarding your home working arrangements.
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1. You must have passed your probation period. Once you’ve passed your contractual probation period, we will consider any application that you make to us for homeworking.
2. It’s best to discuss your intentions first
We strongly recommend that before submitting any request, you have a chat with your line manager OR HR department to explore the opportunity and any potential problems (such as an overlooked need to attend particular meetings or activities), that you might both identify for consideration and resolution before you make the more formal request.
3. Our homeworking criteria
3.1 You will need to demonstrate (both in any initial verbal discussion with your line manager OR HR department and in your subsequent written request) that you meet our criteria for homeworking, as follows:
a) Your role is such that it can accommodate homeworking without compromise to:
i) the quality of your productivity and output (i.e. you will need to have previously demonstrated an ability to self-motivate, to use your own initiative and to deliver expected and good quality results on time and according to plan)
ii) the productivity of any other personnel who may rely on you performing your duties in order to successfully perform theirs, or
iii) the health and safety of any White Label Crowdfunding Limited personnel or other workers providing services to us
b) You are able to work effectively to compensate for any homeworking challenges, such as sudden internet or other utility outages causing disruption to your normal working environment
c) You can be trusted to communicate with and report regularly to your line manager OR HR department and to interact responsibly and regularly with any other personnel who rely on you to manage your remoteness efficiently
d) You agree to comply with the terms of this policy.
3.2 This also means that your request is unlikely to be granted if, for example:
a) your role and duties necessitate a physical presence on our premises (for example, you lead a team that requires a high level of interactivity with and support from you, or the equipment that you need to perform your duties can only be based on our premises)
b) the nature of your role or your level of experience in relation to it is such that it is reasonable, if not necessary, to require you to work under the supervision of other on-premises White Label Crowdfunding Limited personnel
c) you have not performed according to the required standards of work for your role, you’ve not achieved your targets, or you’ve have been issued with performance or other conduct-related warnings in the last 12 months
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4.1 You can apply to us in writing, by email or letter to make this request. Your request must set out:
a) why you believe your job is suitable for homeworking
b) how you meet our homeworking criteria at Part III, paragraph 3 above
c) whether your request is for temporary or a fixed period of homeworking, or a permanent homeworking arrangement
d) whether you want your homeworking arrangements to be part-time, (so that you still spend some of your contracted working hours on our premises) or full-time. If part-time, please specify which days you propose working from home
e) when you would like the homeworking arrangements to start (and end, if relevant)
f) whether you’re proposing any changes to your normal working hours as a consequence of this request and if so, what you wish those hours to be
g) how you intend to maintain appropriate levels of contact with your colleagues and those to whom you report while you are homeworking, so that for example, [name of business] is easily able to monitor your performance, standards of work and general conduct
h) how you plan to ensure document and data security while homeworking and what you intend your homeworking set-up to be; for example, will you be working from a home office, do you have lockable areas, equipment, storage facilities, etc
i) Whether you will be able to attend the office at short notice, for example, to cover colleague absences or to assist with client deadlines or work emergencies
j) That you understand you will still be required to attend our offices for training and other core business purposes
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5.1 If we grant your request, you should expect us to include the following terms, in our written record of agreement, as key conditions of our consent:
a) you being fully contactable during your usual contracted working hours by all usual means of contact, including phone
b) you continuing to be subject to the same key performance measures, objectives, appraisal and assessment processes and training obligations as if you were working on any of our premises. This will include reporting to the same line manager who will regularly review these arrangements and take steps to address any perceived problems
c) you continuing to receive all relevant updates, notification of training opportunities and other information relevant to your role and the duties you perform
d) you attending all meetings, training sessions, courses, conferences and other events at all reasonable locations as we may from time to time request. Where any of these activities take place at locations managed by us, and they require you to work from a workstation of any description, we will provide you with these facilities, although we do not guarantee that it will always be the same workstation (you may, for example, be required to hot-desk or share facilities with another White Label Crowdfunding Limited worker)
*** e) in advance of the homeworking arrangements starting, you putting in place, and providing us with evidence of, all additional insurance policies [(including public liability insurance)][TODO], and any relevant lease/rental/mortgage permissions to be lawfully able to perform your duties from home
f) the right for White Label Crowdfunding Limited to terminate your homeworking arrangements on reasonable notice if, for example, your job changes and homeworking can no longer be accommodated by White Label Crowdfunding Limited in light of these changes
g) The right for White Label Crowdfunding Limited to terminate your homeworking arrangements with immediate effect if your appraisal outcome, performance standards and /or conduct result in us issuing you with a verbal or written warning under our performance management and/or disciplinary policy and procedure
h) the right for you to request the termination of the homeworking arrangements, which we will accommodate where we are reasonably able to do so, (this may depend, for example, on available workspace and other logistical arrangements being readily available. (You should address all such requests to your line manager OR the HR department
5.2 And we may attach a trial period to this consent.