Hi Jen - I’d say it’s a fairly universal question, those who can home work vs those who can’t. We’re not an educational setting, but we have half of our employees able to work from home pretty much at will, and the other half customer facing and so much less able to be offered this flexibility. Unfortunately, different job roles allow for different levels of flexibility, and there’s no way of making that completely ‘fair’!

Sorry - that wasn’t offering proactive tips! I guess start by consulting with all staff about what they think could work (whilst carefully managing expectations about what might end up being offered), and go from there?

In reply to Maya:

Thanks Maya, much appreciated! I guess there's no easy answer with this one but yes we will be consulting with staff as the next step.

I've been supporting employers with flexible working practices for a very long time and the question of fairness comes up regularly. Treating everyone fairly is not the same as treating them identically. People have different needs for flexible arrangements. Indeed, some may already have shifted their career to the school sector to get the flex they need (term time working etc).

The key is to make it clear to all staff that you are open to supporting flexibility as much as possible within the confines of their job. This might mean, for example, investigating job-share arrangements for receptionists and teachers. Not everyone wants to work from home.

Agree with others that every organisation looking at home working needs to do so on the basis of individual jobs. If you have any office buildings, there will be certain jobs (say, cleaning staff) who can never do their jobs remotely - you then have every variation between, and staff who will want to work remotely and those who are desperate to be back on site.

I work in a school too, and we still have a few people working remotely but not many, even amongst our support staff. Once you have pupils back on site, it becomes very apparent (or it did to us) how the practical aspects of schools require most people to be here.

On the flip side, we do look carefully and creatively at things when we get a request for flexibility. One thing that I think that the last 15 months have done is to make everyone think around the edges with this kind of thing - that it doesn't have to be all or nothing, that some jobs are better done remotely some of the time, and that flexibility on both sides is what makes it work.

In reply to Anna:

I could cut and paste your response into many of the discussions here, Anna :)