Ms Joanne Mangan:

It still opens the question of the practicality of that person having to be in the office for the first three months where he or she may not be living in that area, so I would still question the need. I would go back to my original point about the misconception that it is too hard to onboard a new hire remotely. I know a lot of people started new jobs in the last two years completely remotely and they are probably only now travelling into the office and seeing their colleagues for the first time face to face, which is not ideal either. To go back to what we were talking about earlier, it is important in the onboarding stage or the ramp-up stage that a new hire actually gets to meet, where possible, face-to-face with his or her manager and team, but that does not necessarily mean the person needs to be in the office every day for that first three months. As I said, people do not have to be 100% remote and not meet face-to-face. That social interaction, collaboration and opportunity to meet are important. People get more out of a half-hour face-to-face meeting than they might do over a week on virtual, and I know that myself from our team. Giving opportunities to meet is one thing but I would still question the need to have it in the legislation as a specific time period.