Over the last three years, there have been many greats: the Great Resignation, the Great Recession, and the Great Reset. The economy is in decline, companies have to do more with less, and employees are leaving their jobs (or getting laid off) in droves. Altogether, these spell out a great change in the world that businesses can’t afford to ignore.
One big change: employees prefer a hybrid-work model — 72%, according to a Slack survey. Retaining top talent means making that option available to them, especially as we move in and out of multiple pandemics.
Adopting a remote or hybrid work model means adjusting old policies and creating new ones to reflect these changes. Unsurprisingly, legal has a critical role to play in making this happen, working cross-functionally to ensure that the company runs smoothly during times of massive change.
The Role of Legal
While leadership (including your Chief Legal Officer) decides what these new policies will be, the entire legal team is responsible for the three Cs: collaborating with other teams to capture the key parts of these policies, codifying these policies as company-wide standards, and communicating these policies to the workforce, so everyone is on the same page.
Collaborate
When a company adopts a hybrid work model, it’s crucial that the policies reflect the company culture and employee needs. It takes a lot to get the whole team aligned, and while legal has a big role to play, they can’t do it alone.
Legal has to work with leadership to understand the direction the company will take. They also need to collaborate with HR to ensure that the policies that govern workplace standards and employee expectations take everyone into account.
Collaboration with IT and development teams is an often overlooked aspect of creating these policies. Since more people will be using their computers at home, legal needs to work with the tech-facing teams to maintain digital compliance in a remote environment. These teams will collaborate to understand data security risks better and establish a security policy that protects the company while the workforce is scattered.
Codify
Policies and contracts help keep the business running smoothly, and part of legal’s role is putting these policies into effect. Legal will work with HR to enact these policies that outline the company’s new standard going forward.
Using their knowledge of the law, legal teams create policies that protect the company and set employee expectations. For example, in the employee handbook and remote work policies, legal teams must clearly define their hybrid work model and outline when and under what circumstances it’s allowed.
Because there are a few different legal implications for hybrid work (like tax obligations and employee reimbursement), legal also has to make sure the policies address these issues to protect the company from liability.
Legal teams are responsible for ensuring that these policies scale with the business rather than hold them back as they grow.
Communicate
Finally, legal plays a major role in communicating these policies to the rest of the company.
Every member of the team needs to understand the content and scope of these company policies, as well as how it applies to them. Legal needs to work with human resources to ensure that the employee handbook is updated and shared effectively with the company.
This goes a long way in preventing unwitting discrimination, as it clarifies what accommodations are available to employees in the event of multiple pandemics. Especially with a hybrid work model, it’s important that these policies are communicated in a remote-friendly way.
For example, as new employees join the company, legal has to execute contactless contracts that can be signed, tracked, and managed remotely. A contract management tool can help make this historically tedious part of business smoother.
Summary
In executing hybrid work policies, legal’s role is to be a cross-functional advisor to the wider company. They collaborate with other teams to gather important information about the policies, codify them, and communicate them to the entire business.
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