Ms Wendy Gray:

We often use time to be served in the context of eligibility for rights, including in the cases of parental leave, carer's leave and unfair dismissal, for example. Various pieces of legislation have such provisions necessitating the serving of a certain time. The other issue we examined was facilitation of the training of people before they work remotely, because we have had feedback that it is often difficult to train people if they start remote working on day one. That said, employers have the choice to offer employees such terms and conditions from day one if they wish to. Therefore, employers are free to offer remote working to employees from day one. What we are doing is just providing for a legal right and that must be treated differently and have a balance. That is why we have selected six months as the potential qualifying period, which is much shorter than is the case regarding when many other employment rights kick in. We are, however, again happy to take on board the views of the members of the committee and to consider this if they feel it is too extreme.