Mr. Finn Hegarty:

I want to make a point on the first question. There was a statement around blended or hybrid work being the future but that having people come into the office is going to help them get promotion because they get that visibility. That was definitely a challenge that we faced when we had that hybrid structure in that our remote workers felt they did not have that visibility, they were out of sight, out of mind, and they were being overlooked for promotion. We had to shift our performance management and the way we made promotions in order to not have that bias for people who were not in the office or in person even some of the time. That is a deliberate change we had to make to put everyone on that level playing field. Even as we made that shift to hybrid, that was something we had to change because we did not want to create the stigma that people who are outside the office are not going to progress in their careers at the same time.

On the Deputy’s question on liability, when new joiners come on board, on an annual basis we do health and safety assessments for their workspace and where they are working. We have insurance which covers us for home workers and we have various controls around security to make sure we are protected when folks are out of the office. Fortunately, we have not had any incidents where someone has had an accident in the home but that is definitely an area we need to do more research on regarding who is liable in that instance - for example, if someone is making a cup of coffee and slips, are we liable? That is the sort of issue we are still doing a bit more research on.