Is it time to return to the office? What employers must consider

Jake McManus, Solicitor

Hybrid work has become a legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics reveal that over one in four British workers worked on a hybrid basis between January and March 2025, demonstrating that splitting the working week between the home and the office has become the ‘new normal’.

However, despite the clear shift towards remote work that has taken place during the last five years, a recent survey by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) finds that there is a growing appetite to get employees back into the office, with many businesses now requiring staff to work fully onsite. This is also a theme that we have witnessed within our own work here in the Kuits Employment team.

The BCC’s survey of predominantly small and medium-sized businesses found that:

• 41% of businesses have increased their requirement for onsite working during the last year; and
• 48% of businesses expect that all staff will be required to work onsite full time during the next year.

The shift away from hybrid/home working varies across different sectors, with the BCC’s survey revealing that twice as many manufacturers and business-to-consumer companies are looking to require all working days to be onsite compared to business-to-business companies.

Back to the office: factors to consider

Employers will have their reasons for encouraging – or mandating – a return to onsite working; however, there are some important legal and commercial factors that employers should consider when making the decision to require staff to return to the office, whether that be on a full-time or hybrid basis, and especially for existing staff who may have been working on a hybrid basis for a significant period of time:

●   Check the contractual position: first and foremost, employers should review their standard employment contracts and check the relevant express provisions such as place of work and any specific home-working clause. If an employee is contractually entitled to work from home then their consent must be obtained prior to any changes to their location of work, failing which a business may risk Employment Tribunal claims for being in breach of contract. In some circumstances, it may over time be an implied term that an employee can work from home by way of custom and practice, for example where an employee has commonly worked from home for an extended period of time and this working arrangement has been accepted by the business.

●   Workplace policies: employers should review their existing HR policies, such as any hybrid working or flexible working policies. Whilst workplace policies are often non-contractual and businesses therefore can make changes at their discretion, they can still be relied upon or referred to as evidence during Employment Tribunal proceedings.

●   Flexible Working Requests: be mindful of an employee’s statutory right to make a flexible working request to change their working arrangement to work from home. Following legislative changes last year, employees now have a ‘day one right’ to make up to two flexible working requests in any 12-month period. Employers then have two months to deal with any such application, including any appeal. Employers should take care when responding to any statutory request to work from home and consider the specific reasons set out by employees, which could include issues relating to childcare and any health and wellbeing concerns. In a previous bulletin, we provided guidance for employers on how to respond to an employee’s flexible working request.

●   Disability discrimination: employers should keep in mind their duty to make reasonable adjustments to avoid disabled employees from being subjected to a substantial disadvantage in the workplace because of any provision, criterion or practice – which includes a policy requiring staff to work full time in the office. The Kuits employment team have recently dealt with cases involving companies using blanket return-to-office policies, whereby the employer failed to consider the individual circumstances of disabled employees who benefited from flexible working and who were therefore being put to a disadvantage by having their entitlement to remote working removed from them.

●   Recruitment and retention: the flexibility of being able to work from home and avoiding the time and cost associated with commuting to work may be desirable for job applicants and a benefit which existing staff value. The BCC’s survey found that 1 in 10 employers had seen staff leave in response to a requirement to work onsite only. Employers may want to weigh the benefits of requiring staff to work fully onsite against the impact it could have on employee retention and recruitment levels.

If you require assistance with bringing staff back into the office or want to discuss any of the above in further detail, please contact Jake McManus at jake.mcmanus@kuits.com or 0161 912 6151.