News focus: Hybrid working is here to stay - but HR policies vary widely

Freya Summers (pictured above) is both a corporate lawyer and a regular on the school run. While 10 years ago she faced the choice of the office or her children – she chose her children – now she feels she gets the best of both worlds.

Pre-Covid, flexible working was not an option available to her. But the flexibility encouraged at her new firm, Midlands practice Wright Hassall, has allowed her back into the law.

‘My kids are at school and nursery and the set-up here means I can flex my hours and be at the school gates at 3.20pm,’ said Summers.

‘It is a real change from what I was used to in law pre-Covid, when it was still jackets-on-chairs until nine at night, and being seen to be the last person in the office.’

Summers works one day a week in the firm’s Leamington Spa office and fulfils the rest of her hours working from home in Nottingham.

‘It is making it easier for working parents to do the job that, I think, pre-Covid, we wouldn’t have been able to do. I thought returning to full-time corporate law would be almost impossible, but here I am and I couldn’t be happier.’

Around three-quarters of Wright Hassall’s 230 staff members are able to work remotely and the firm has no intention of rowing back on the changes that lockdown prompted.

HR director Mark Shrimpton said: ‘Hybrid working is an essential part of our application process and is helping us attract a wider pool of candidates, just like Freya. We trust people to make decisions about what works best for them and us.

‘We want the office to be a destination place where people can enjoy coming in and seeing the benefits [of that], rather than just coming in as that is how it has always been done.

‘People enjoy the face-to-face interaction in the office, but also working from home and finding the space to get work done.’

Yet the picture is not the same across the sector. Other firms report that staff crave the office environment and an escape from home.

Some are even offering financial incentives to those who choose to come in (or disincentives for those who do not, depending on how you view it).

London firm Stephenson Harwood said last year that it would allow staff to work remotely, but pay them 20% less than their current salary. The situation was a little more nuanced than simply punishing remote workers: the proposed salary cut was designed to match those recruited during lockdown who worked remotely and outside London.

National firm Osborne Clarke has gone further, linking bonus payments to office attendance. As of next year, to be considered for a bonus, staff will need to reach ‘minimum expectations’, including completing mandatory training, total time recording, setting and achieving objectives, contributing to wider firm initiatives, and being in the office ‘more often than not’.

That means full-time staff have to spend at least three days a week in one of the Osborne Clarke offices, with clients or in court.

‘There are a number of valid reasons why this isn’t always possible and we will always take these into full consideration when making decisions on bonus eligibility,’ said chief people officer Graham de Guise.

‘We do feel working in the office brings so many benefits in building and maintaining relationships, collaboration, sparking ideas and learning from each other, as well as preserving our unique culture.’

Even if firms are reluctant to encourage flexible working, the law is overtaking them. The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act received royal assent last month and gives employees the right to make two flexible-working requests in any 12-month period. It reduced the time employers have to respond to requests from three to two months, and they are now required to ‘consult’ with employees before refusing a request.

Firms whose very business model is to be remote are waiting on the sidelines for rivals to put up more barriers to flexible working. These firms proliferated during lockdown and continue to tempt lawyers from traditional practices.

Toby Harper, founder of remote firm Harper James, wrote last year that mutual trust is key to retaining staff.

‘Those who penalise their staff financially or even just make them feel any sense of guilt about working flexibly will alienate those people, which can have a very real impact on operational performance and quality of service,’ said Harper.

‘Creating a “them” (home/flexible workers) and “us” (office workers) environment is self-destructive, and firms will pay dearly for it in the long run.’