Ms Joanne Mangan:

This is another one where we have a question mark as to whether it is necessary. It goes back to the idea of the need to default to the office when something goes wrong or in order to do certain things. In a remote-first setting, you should not need to default to the office. Performance management issues will not necessarily be solved simply by bringing the employee in, sitting them in front of you and giving them a talking to or whatever is envisaged by this part of the legislation. Ideally, in a remote-first setting there are management practices and culture, and the managers are able to handle performance management issues in that setting. It is good to have the option of being able to meet, but I do not think it needs to be called out specifically in the legislation because it reinforces the idea that the office is the best and when things go wrong, we need to default to the office.