Ms Maeve McElwee:

No. We are not saying these are issues that have not been dealt in the past two years. In fact, we have been saying this for at least two years and we were saying it pre pandemic as we were looking at more organisations moving to remote working. However, they are big challenges to grapple with and it takes employers time to work them out. When we talk about the scale of remote working and the fact that we have recognised it is possible, we are saying some of it is possible and some of it will absolutely remain longer term; a lot of what happened would not have been done with the blessing of employers in the absence of the public health guidance and advice. It is certainly not a Wild West of cybersecurity. Employers have been investing significant amounts in managing cybersecurity, but it is a fact that where we have challenges around networks and connectivity, and challenges around where people are actually working from, they open up avenues of additional concern for employers and they need to be taken care of.

Insurance of equipment continues to be an issue. Everybody has operated within a pandemic environment for two years, including our insurers, employees and employers, and we have looked at this as being temporary, albeit that its temporary nature has been extended. When we start to look at permanent solutions to this, we will start to see different issues coming through and we need to have that clarification. Insurance should just be a matter of clarification.

Clocking is extraordinarily difficult because software is not going to be sufficient by itself and there is paperwork required. Just because a person is not logged in, does not mean he or she is not working, and that is a challenge for many employers in professional environments where people are not monitoring their workday all day long through technological means.