Different salaries for hybrid and remote workers doing the same job? - General - Flexible and hybrid working

4 Different salaries for hybrid and remote workers doing the same job?

Anna | 0 Posts

30 Nov, 2022 17:42

Hi all,

Bit of a odd query maybe, but I'd be interested in any thoughts, sign-posting or case law...

We have 2 employees who live in London. They both work for an office in Liverpool - they are both currently paid the local Liverpool area market rate in our salary bandings. Following the pandemic and office closure, one wishes to be hybrid (yes, really) and come to the Liverpool office 3 days a week. The other wishes to work full time remote permanently. There is provisional approval for both these flexible working requests.

The current company policy is that if you are hybrid, you continue to recieve the local market rate for the office you work for / from. If you are remote, you may have your salary changed to align with the nearest (to where you live) company office's salary banding. All our other offices are in the far south, where salary bandings are higher. In the example above, it means that in practice, the hybrid worker will be paid the same current salary and commute to Liverpool, the remote worker would receive a several thousand pound increase in salary to work from home.

A few of us are uncomfortable with this as a policy - these are two people doing the same job for the same team, living in exactly the same area but would have a large discrepancy in salary. I'd be interested to know if anyone has a similar policy. Are there alternative approaches we could present? Could this approach present a discrimination risk? We have had people return to office saying it is primarily for their mental health, but in theory, they could then be financially worse off for choosing not to work from home.

Thanks.

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Nichola | 0 Posts

1 Dec, 2022 07:53

Hi,

I’m a student, so not coming to give an answer (sorry), but I have a question. The employee who will be travelling to Liverpool 3 x a week; who will be funding the travel? Will they need hotels? I wonder if the employer funds this, will it be a fair compromise? It may be more expensive than the salary increase for the home worker.

This policy does seem unfair. If the travelling employee wants to be in an office due to their mental health, then it does feel they are being financially penalised for this, in comparison to the other employee.

If nothing else, a review of the policy is needed.

Nicki
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Robey | 0 Posts

1 Dec, 2022 13:17

A few of us are uncomfortable with this as a policy

As you should be. Whilst the practice of "London weighting" is well known for jobs that require the postholder to live in the Smoke in order to be able to attend work, the idea of regionally-set salaries on the basis of local average wages is bizarre and, in my opinion, extremely dangerous given that the ethnic diversity of the UK isn't uniformly distributed. I think this policy runs a serious risk of a claim of indirect racial discrimination.

To the specific case in point, however, don't forget that you can always make exceptions to policy if it makes business sense. If the person looking to commute is told that they're going to take a financial hit as a result, I imagine that they might re-think this decision. If you go ahead with it, this decision is likely to shine a spotlight on the policy that could well lead directly to the scenario I laid out above.
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Nina Waters | 0 Posts

1 Dec, 2022 13:20

Hi Anna,

It's an unusual situation, and clearly won't be felt to be fair by the people involved. My query is why you would change a home-worker's salary according to where they choose to live? Surely unless there is a requirement to live in a particular area that would lead to additional expense, the rate should be the one for the job they do, not the address they live at.

What is this part of the policy trying to address? If it's to reduce the salaries of people who move away from London/SE because they are fully remote, could you instead amend your policy to have a job rate and then a weighting that can be removed for anyone who is fully remote?

Nina
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Helen | 0 Posts

2 Dec, 2022 12:49

In reply to Nina Waters:
What Nina Said.....
Agree that if a company requires someone to live in a certain area to do their work then that's a management instruction of sorts and it may be appropriate to pay a specific rate. However, normally, where someone lives is their choice and they manage the commute and costs of where they live accordingly.
In this hybrid age I can see complications with living in one place and working in another when either the home location or the work location has different salary levels.
It's not so long ago that companies were being pressed to pay an Aberdeen Weighting due to the cost of housing etc - and then the oil and gas market started to collapse and house prices went down leaving people trying to move with negative equity.
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