Ireland’s recently-introduced law on the right to remote working is barely worth the PDF it was drafted on.
This month, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) ruled that TikTok didn’t have to allow a staff member to work remotely – despite the employee requesting it, as she couldn’t find affordable accommodation in Dublin, near the TikTok offices.
The WRC sided with TikTok – even though the employee’s main daily activities were with teams abroad, not those physically present in the Dublin office.
The higher up in the company the person is, the less keen they are on remote working
So we now have a law for remote working that doesn’t really guarantee remote working.
The WRC ruling will be music to the ears of tech multinational bosses running heavily-staffed Irish operations. Many of these senior executives despise remote working, regarding it as a Covid-era measure that has become a drain on productivity.
This was articulated succinctly by the former chief executive of Google, in an unguarded moment during a talk at California’s Stanford University last month.
“Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning,” said Eric Schmidt, adding that “the reason start-ups work is because the people work like hell”.
While Schmidt later apologised for the remarks (though maybe only because they were widely disseminated online and embarrassed him in front of executive colleagues still at the company), no-one doubts that many other tech CEOs in the industry share his view – that being saddled with remote working policies is something for also-ran companies with also-ran ambitions.
A gradual reduction in the number of days that employees are allowed take for remote working is now underway.
Last week, the founder and CEO of the trendy smartphone manufacturer, Nothing, informed staff that remote work is being phased out, with five days at the office becoming compulsory.
“Remote work is not compatible with a high ambition level plus high speed,” wrote founder and CEO Carl Pei in an email sent to staff.
“Creativity and innovation are really key to us winning against bigger companies. We need to solve difficult problems and do more with way less resources than competitors in all areas of our business. This does not work well remotely.”
‘It has been a game-changer for us, in terms of getting and retaining talent’
I’ve talked to a wide range of industry founders, CEOs and managers, as well as staff. And Pei’s reasoning is not isolated thinking.
As a rule of thumb, the bigger a stake in, or the higher up in the company the person is, the less keen they are on remote working.
Many agree with the thoughts of Eric Schmidt and Carl Pei, even if they won’t say so publicly.
The biggest companies have long made their views clear on their ambivalence towards remote working. Apple’s Tim Cook was first among the tech giants to tell staff they’d need to be back in the office for a minimum of three days a week, even before the pandemic was completely done.
Dell’s staffing policy all but excludes staff from promotion if they work fully remotely, putting into practice what many firms say has become a reality anyway.
So if bosses and company owners dislike remote working so much, why is it still a thing?
Because, as survey after survey has shown, the staff like it.
And up until now, retaining a remote work option in the tech sector has been protected by a booming skills economy with high demand for staff. That has allowed employees to insist on remote working or they’ll move to another firm.
However according to senior recruiters I’ve spoken to in recent weeks, that has started to soften. The hiring market has slowed down. Skilled staff, even in the tech sector, can now go months between jobs if they leave their company.
That hands more bargaining power to companies, which are starting to flex their opportunity to get people back into the physical office more.It’s not a universal position, however. Some big tech firms in Ireland are still publicly gung-ho on remote working as a perfectly compatible practice in line with company goals.
“It has been a game-changer for us, in terms of getting and retaining talent, as well as in lifestyle terms of where people want to actually live,” says Siobhán Curtin, site lead for eBay Ireland, which employs around 900 people here. Around 70pc of these employees work full-time from home.
“There are challenges for sure, but you can overcome those with a little bit of different thinking. It absolutely can work. You can see it in our results, which haven’t fallen. If anything, we have seen improvement in our customer satisfaction, as well as in our effectiveness and efficiency.”
And even at the top of companies, some bosses like remote working – as long as it mainly only applies to themselves.
Like the incoming CEO of Starbucks, Brian Nicoll, who has negotiated a deal where he can work remotely from his Californian beach home, even though regular Starbucks staff have been issued with a return-to-office mandate.
But this is starting to look like the exception rather than the rule.
The trends now suggests that, outside the public sector (where habits can be embedded regardless of effect) the noose is starting to tighten on work-from-home privileges. What was once seen as a perk is now being reined in as something unaffordable for firms that want to stay competitive.
What seems clear is that whatever big private sector firms do or don’t do on the topic, the State’s law on the remote working is watery and leads to situations where a worker in a tech multinational loses a case, despite having what seemed like a good argument.
At least we now know, thanks to the Workplace Relations Commission, that the State doesn’t have our back.
WRC v TIK TOK and remote working
