Foley & Lardner LLP partner Carrie Hoffman shared insight for employers transitioning away from work from home in the Law360 article, “3 W&H Tips On Return-To-Office Mandates.”
Hoffman said that any company seeking to bring its employees out of the house and into the office needs to manage the message well because workers value remote work and have adjusted their lifestyles accordingly.
“You’re going to get questions from employees about, ‘I used to walk to my living room to work, now I have to commute again. Am I going to get paid for my commute?'” Hoffman said. “Their day is going to look a lot different. You’re going to get a lot of, I think, questions about that, and employers need to know how to respond to that.”
Hoffman noted that, when relevant, employers should retrain employees on their specific requirements around logging hours. “You’re not allowed to clock in more than X minutes before your shift, and you’re not allowed to be working unless you’re clocked in,” she said, suggesting a “kind of reinforcement of all those old-school, if you will, wage and hour rules.”
“In-person work provides more control to the company than at-home work, when you don’t really necessarily know what’s going on,” she added, “which means we need to be at the ready.”
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