Hybrid working can offer real benefits for you and your employees. It can support recruitment, retention, work-life balance and productivity. However, it also changes the way employees handle information, documents and business-critical tasks.
In this new hybrid environment, it’s important you set expectations, shape behaviour and ensure that employees understand how information should be handled when working away from the usual workplace.
For agricultural and rural businesses, the issue may not always be sophisticated cyber security. It may be much more practical. For example, what happens if an employee takes important paperwork home, then becomes unexpectedly absent from work? What if invoices, supplier notes, customer records, livestock documentation, employee records or payroll information are only available in hard copy at that employee’s house?
Such situations can create real operational difficulties. Payments may be delayed, suppliers may be frustrated, deadlines may be missed, and the employer may be left trying to balance business need with the employee’s privacy and wellbeing.
This does not mean you should avoid hybrid working altogether. But where hybrid or home working is allowed, you should think carefully about working patterns, what documents can be taken off site, how information is accessed, and what happens if an employee is suddenly unavailable.
Practical points
A good hybrid working policy should cover practical points such as:
what work can be carried out from home;
whether original documents can be removed from the workplace;
how confidential information should be stored and transported;
whether documents should be scanned or saved centrally;
who has access to shared drives, systems or paper records;
expectations around data protection and confidentiality;
what employees should do if they are unwell while holding work documents; and
when you may reasonably require work property or documents to be returned.
A template Hybrid Working Policy is available under the Staff Handbook Additional Policies.
You should also consider whether particular roles are suitable for hybrid working. In many farming businesses, for example, some roles will be site-based by nature. Others, such as administrative, finance, HR, compliance or customer-facing office roles, may allow some flexibility. The key is to be clear, consistent and fair.
Avoid informal arrangements
You should avoid informal arrangements developing without proper thought. A casual “take it home and finish it there” approach may work in the short term, but it can cause problems if there is no record of what has been taken, no shared access, and no plan if the employee is absent.
Remember, if you’re unsure, please feel free to discuss any queries with us on 0370 840 0234.
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