If ever a government consultation was overtaken by events, it is this week’s offering on Making Flexible Working the Default. For many employers this is now pushing at a door which is not just open but blown clean off its hinges by the pandemic and the WFH experience of the last 18 months.
The Consultation document represents an early failure by the government under the surely-imminent Coronavirus (Prevention of Irritating Clichés) Regulations 2021 – someone has weeded out most of the “unprecedenteds” and “new normals”, but there are still seven of Boris’s “build back betters” in the first 11 pages alone, and the usual repetition of chunks of the Foreword (“freeing employees and employers….from the default 9 to 5 model in order to recruit and retain the talent we need“) in the Introduction (“an opportunity for employers and employees to free themselves from the default 9 to 5 in order to recruit and retain the talent that we need…”).
In deciding whether to allow an employee’s request to continue a full or partial remote working schedule, what account should be taken of the reasons for that request?
We made an employee redundant before the furlough scheme ended – will his unfair dismissal claim succeed?
After much anticipation, the White House 
There has been surprisingly little in the press around what is going to happen when the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme ends on 30 September. Will there be the jobs Armageddon that some have forecast, or will roles for the million or so people still on furlough at the end of August reappear in time to avoid that? And at a more granular level on the same topic, here is the next question from our What Next webinar earlier this week:
It has been nine months since the first person in the United States received the COVID-19 vaccine, and ever since then, employers have been weighing the pros and cons of whether to require that employees be vaccinated as a condition of employment. On September 9, 2021, President Biden narrowed the options for many employers when he announced a six-pronged, comprehensive COVID-19 Action Plan (“Plan”), which in part, requires that larger employers ensure that their workforce is vaccinated, or in the alternative, that they submit to weekly COVID-19 testing. The stated goal of the Plan is to ensure that the US is using every available tool to combat COVID-19 and to save lives in the months ahead, while also keeping businesses and schools open and safe, and protecting the economy from further lockdowns and damage.