Ms Joanne Mangan:

There are things we can learn from the past two years that could be brought into consideration in the legislation. This would be more leaning towards the experience employees have had and how much they want to continue working remotely. How this is embedded in the legislation I cannot say but it is something that needs to be taken into account when the legislation is being finalised. It is something that employees want. Many employees are afraid they will be brought back to their office and they will not have a right or recourse to be able to say they cannot do so. Over the past year we have learned that remote working can work. It has surprised everybody how much they have found it to be beneficial to their work-life balance and all of the other positive issues I spoke about. We can also learn from the past two years how not to do it. It was dropped on everybody in a last-minute emergency. People just packed up their desks and went home. Many companies tried to take the office and put it in the home. We are not starting from the beginning because we know it can work and we have learned a lot from the past two years. It has brought us to a place that could have taken 20 years for us to get to. This momentum was happening but it was happening slowly. Perhaps the lessons that can be learned from the past two years is to look at some of the challenges that companies have had and try to figure out why they have had those challenges. Is it because of remote work itself or because of the situation they were put in? This is a very important question when we are looking at the reasons for refusal in particular.