41% of firms to let staff work from office and home: survey

A NEW era of work is bedding in with over a third of employers here saying they expect staff to combine home-working with office toil, according to a survey.

But the dawn of more remote working will not necessarily bring complete freedom to work from home for companies in other jurisdictions.

Recruiter Hays said over half of Northern Ireland companies are returning to offices after working from home during lockdown.

But teams are alternating the days they work in the office and at home, or working one week at home and one in the workplace.

At 41%, more than a third of employers expect staff to combine remote and office work in the next six months.

John Moore, managing director of Hays in NI, said people want a happy medium. “The greatest demand is for a new hybrid way of working — staff want a balance between office life and working remotely, which is now far closer in their sights than ever before.”

In theory remote working should enable people to seek jobs in other jurisdictions without leaving their home. Online shopping and cloud services giant Amazon has announced it’s creating another 1,000 jobs in the Republic, bringing its workforce there to 5,000 by 2020. But Mike Beary, its Ireland country manager, told the Irish Independent that the new jobs would be based within the state for tax and permit reasons.

“Certainly, a number of jobs will lend themselves to working from home within Ireland. You have to factor in taxes and work authorisations. As we grow, we’ll want our teams to be in Ireland.

“Some will come into the office every day and some will lend themselves to being remote. So that will be a blend.”

Employment lawyer Louise Mcaloon, a partner at Worthingtons Solicitors, said a change in tax arrangements could come about where a person starts a long-term arrangement of working from home where they’ve previously travelled to their employer in another jurisdiction.

“A more regular/permanent change in place of work could potentially have tax implications for an employee who used to travel across the border to work (cross border/frontier workers) if their place of work is now in the same jurisdiction as their residence, albeit their employer is based, and their payroll operates, in the other jurisdiction.

“It may depend on how permanent/temporary the remote/ home working arrangement is... but it would require individual consideration and tax advice.”

New ways of working are typically embraced most eagerly by the tech sector.

Paul Wright, a partner at IT recruitment firm Enso, said some clients were hiring people from elsewhere in the UK and further afield to fill some positions. But he added: “My own feeling on this though is that it won’t last long.

“I don’t think you can gain the same level of loyalty or cultural fit with remote workers and also someone based in southern England would be taking a reduction in salary to work for an NI business and would be unlikely to stay with them when their own regional jobs market recovers more.

“I know of one software house who hired two senior developers a few months ago who are based in southern England and one of them has already left to take a ‘better offer’ closer to home paying more money.

“I think we will see a spike of firms hiring remote workers for a while but I feel it will eventually die down again for these reasons.”