I just wondered if anybody else was experiencing more than normal requests for flexible working i.e working from home on a permanent basis.

Following the pandemic we introduced a hybrid working policy where full time staff work from the office for 2 days out of 5 and part time for 1 day out of whatever their contracted hours are.

However, we are now experiencing requests from some of our employees who do not want to come to the office but want to work from home on a permanent basis citing the fact that they have been able to work from home during the pandemic with no issues and in some cases wanting to take children to school etc and in fact have not actually signed up to the hybrid policy.

If we look at the 8 reasons, I doubt we could legitimately say that we would be affected by any apart from ending up with an office we are paying for (in a lease) with no staff (or very few staff) in attendance.  The sticking point for me is it always appears to be support staff (the lowest paid) who are happy to adhere to the policies and are merely grateful for the flexibility as they have never had this before.

I would be interested if others are experiencing this issue.

Louise