New flexible working rules that came in on Saturday could bolster demand for home-working kit.
At least that’s according to some vendors, with Boom Collaboration, for instance, predicting they will “trigger a further spike in demand for video conferencing equipment”.
Under the new Flexible Working (Amendment) Regulations, workers will have the right to request flexible working from day one of a new job (compared with the current 26 weeks), with employers required to consider any requests and provide a reason before rejection.
Despite some business leaders – perhaps most prominently Sir Alan Sugar – positioning remote working as bad for morale and renewed efforts in the right-wing press to depict those wanting to work from home as “work shy” , the government claims the new measures are “good for British business”. It points to research showing companies that embrace flexible working can attract more talent, improve staff motivation and reduce staff turnover.
According to Gartner, fully remote and hybrid knowledge workers were set to represent 67% of the UK’s workforce in 2023, as patterns established during Covid become hard wired.
Boom co-founder Holli Hulett (pictured above with fellow co-founder Fredrik Hörnkvist) claimed the new legislation “represents a compelling opportunity for all those working in the industry to engage with their customers and re-evaluate their flexible working needs”.
But what do channel partners on the ground think? We caught up with five partner leaders to find out…
“I can’t see it making a huge difference”
Francesca Lukes, CEO, Wanstor
Will the new flexible working regulations have any impact on tech adoption, and where your customers are spending money?
I can’t see it making a huge difference to a technology adoption and investments. I think this is already a reality for the majority of organisations and whether or not there is regulation in place, the competitive employment market means that if employees can’t get flexibility from their current organisation, they will be able to move elsewhere.
In general, organisations will need to have strong modern workplace tools in place that facilitate collaboration, and this is already a priority in the post-Covid/AI-ready world.
I do think it’s a great message from a gender equality perspective as it should create broader opportunities for women re-entering the workforce, or couples sharing parenting duties, hopefully removing the barriers through compressed hours, part time, and job sharing.
In general I hope it facilitates a broader workforce to enter the market and ease the pressures. I can see this creating challenges around technology adoption and training, though again this is already a priority for many.
“We absolutely view these legislative changes as opportunities“
Chris Payne, Director, Pro2col
We absolutely view these legislative changes as opportunities. Secure collaborative working is an area of growth for us at the moment which will almost certainly see further returns after the 6 April.
There are three main areas of opportunity which we have identified on our strategic horizon. Firstly, we believe there is still some modernisation taking place post-pandemic on ensuring that users have a seamless experience between home and office, with regard to file usage and sharing, while ensuring the business is protected by features such as DLP, DRM and data classification.
Secondly, the changes to flexible working rules are likely going to result in an increase in requests for working alternate hours or part-time as much of the home-working revolution has settled down now. Many of the solutions available in the file transfer industry include automation and even AI capabilities which will help to plug these gaps with automated decision-making capabilities and inadvertently push those business further towards the productivity frontier.
But finally, and personally I think most importantly, outside of the financial rewards we will be able to attract people into IT from a pool who would otherwise have left or even avoided full-time roles due to personal obligations such as childcare. As someone with a two-year old in part-time nursery, I have seen first-hand how talented individuals are unable to find work because they are unable to commit to traditional full-time requirements.
“It certainly supports the ‘hybrid working is here to stay’ narrative”
Nick Clapham, MD Virtue UK
Will the new flexible working regulations have any impact on tech adoption, and where your customers are spending money?
It’s interesting to see regulation reinforcing the transition to flexible working, whilst at the same time, large organisations seem to be incentivising employees to return to office-based roles. How much difference the regulations will make versus the cultural work/life balance shift that preceded them is up for discussion, but it certainly supports the “hybrid working is here to stay” narrative.
In any case, it all speaks to opportunities in the technology landscape. Security spend is continually on the increase, and rightly so with the much-publicised rise in attacks. Users working outside of the office, in some circumstances permanently, places an extra security burden on IT departments. Technologies such as Microsoft Intune are great ways of facilitating security control and management for remote devices, and that’s a discussion we at VirtueUK are having regularly.”
“We don’t see it having a large impact from a technology deployment point of view”
Nicola Saner, MD, Chorus
Will the new flexible working regulations have any impact on tech adoption, and where your customers are spending money?
Although this is a key step forward for the UK workforce, we don’t see it having a large impact from a technology deployment point of view today.
The pandemic was simply unprecedented in terms of impact relative to remote working and businesses of all sizes globally had to deploy solutions at scale and speed to facilitate fully remote working.
From our point of view, these solutions have been optimised and improved over the last couple of years out of necessity – so this legislation won’t be bringing anything very new to consider.
Many businesses now onboard staff with a mindset of fully remote capability from day one – even if that’s not the intended working plan for that employee. So, all in all, although there will likely be some shift in behaviours and spends, we expect it to be relatively limited.
“I don’t think that will have a material impact”
Graham Charlton, CEO, Softcat
Will the new flexible working regulations have any impact on tech adoption, and where your customers are spending money?
No not really. Most customers are set up for that and those that aren’t are probably in a minority so I don’t think that will have a material impact on the way and on what our customers are spending.
