WRC to publish guidelines on remote and flexible working by the end of this month

Employee rights to request remote or flexible working are poised to come into effect after the Government said the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) will finalise guidelines on the matter by the end of this month, 18 months after Ireland missed an EU deadline to roll out the measure.

Parents and carers will have the right to ask their employers for flexible working arrangements, such as four-day weeks or flexitime, and employees will be able to request remote working, under plans by the Government. However, Ireland has been facing fines and legal action after failing to transpose laws to give effect to a European work-life balance directive by an August 2022 deadline.

While the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act passed in April last year, the Government said the WRC code on remote and flexible working had to be published before the section of the legislation backing these new rights could commence.

The WRC’s public consultation on the code ended last June.

A spokesperson for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has told the Irish Independent that “the WRC is expected to have the code finalised in January. The commencement of Part 3 is a matter for the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth”.

In 2022, then enterprise minister Leo Varadkar drafted the Right to Request Remote Working Bill, but its 13 grounds for an employer to refuse a request proved controversial. Instead, the law was included in the Work Life Balance bill and it set out that the employer has an obligation to consider both their needs and the needs of employees when evaluating a request for either remote or flexible working.

The delays in these rights has created a headache for parents who became accustomed to flexible work arrangements during the pandemic, for fully remote workers called back to the office – despite having fled the city to escape high rents and house prices – and for employers uncertain about how to respond to flexible working requests.

“We’ve been waiting for the WRC framework for last 12 months,” said Crystel Robbins Rynne, chief operating officer of HRLocker.

“Companies are looking for guidelines on what’s reasonable to say to requests for remote or flexible working.”

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