If you choose to work from home, you may be unsure as to what your rights are – oftentimes these are included in your employment contract. Some rights are statutory, and you may not be immediately aware of what these are. If you have transitioned to home working recently, these rights may seem ambiguous as they may only apply to your workplace.
Some issues must be considered before deciding you should be home working – are you prevented from using your home for business, for instance, you may be in a council house (businesses are not allowed) or restricted by your lease or deed, for example. If this is the case then you may need to speak to the council/lease owner to change the agreement before working from home.
The following shows some of the rights you have and what you can do to enforce them.
| Your Rights | Enforcing your Rights |
| Right to Health and Safety | You may enforce these by contacting your workplace or your union if there are issues involved with your workplace’s health and safety. |
| Right to Privacy | Under the Human Rights Act 1998, you may deny entry to your employer if they come to your house without your permission or outside of an agreed time. |
| Right to Working Hours | Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, you are not required to work more than 48 hours or what has been allotted into your employment contract. This is still valid even if you are now working from home. Your employers cannot force you to work beyond these hours. You may tell them no if you wish not to work more hours. |
| Right to Minimum Wage | You still maintain the right to be paid for your time at least at minimum wage. Your employers cannot withhold your pay when you have worked your allotted hours. |
| Right to claim Tax Relief | If you are working from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic, you may be able to claim tax relief on heating, water bills or home content insurance, or on any equipment which you have bought for the use of work. A full guide and claim calculator is available here: www.gov.uk |
| Right to Negotiate | For many issues, such as who should foot the bill of the new equipment that the company may need to buy, or the costs of setting up a home office if their house is not already equipped may be negotiated. Your employer may choose to impose the full cost on you – you do not have to accept this. You may argue that the company must also take some or all of the burden. You may also contact your union and see whether they have agreed on homeworking terms with your employer. |