A proposed bill of rights for the remote worker
3 min read . Updated: 20 Mar 2021, 10:35 AM IST - No. 1: Every employee should be allowed to be off-camera. It’s your home, not your boss’s.
The past year has seen millions of employees transition to remote work—often under pretty rotten conditions. It’s time to change that.
There is, unfortunately, no work-from-home equivalent of a Miranda warning: a list of the rights employees can expect as remote workers to ensure their fair treatment in the new workplace. There is no “Law & Order: Work From Home," where bosses can hear over and over the conditions that will make for a satisfying and sustainable work-from-home arrangement.
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So as a longtime remote worker, let me offer my own work-from-home Bill of Rights. Feel free to add your own conditions. Then, let the lobbying begin!
You have the right to remain off-camera and unsurveilled.
Yes, your home is now your workplace—but that doesn’t mean it belongs to your boss. You have a right to privacy, both from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and after hours. Your employer should not use webcams, key logging, excessive online check-ins or a camera disguised as a teddy bear as a way of monitoring your work hours or productivity. It’s far more effective for you to agree on goals and deadlines so you can focus on outcomes instead of hours at your desk.
You also should have the right to declare the occasional camera-free call or day—whether it’s because you need to eat lunch during that meeting or because you just don’t feel like being camera-ready (for instance, getting dressed).
Anything that appears on-camera, such as your children or pets, should not be used against you in a professional context.
The cops may be able to use self-disclosures in a court of law, but your employer shouldn’t use accidental disclosures in the context of a performance review. Particularly when so many people had to make an abrupt shift to remote work, without the opportunity to move to a larger home or the ability to send their children off to school every day, we all need to cut each other some slack. But that also means that the cuteness of your child or cat won’t count in your favor, either.
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You have the right to access tech support and tools.
You deserve managerial and logistical support as a remote employee; expecting you to master remote productivity overnight, without any extra guidance or gear, is flat-out unreasonable. It’s the duty of your employer to provide you with the infrastructure you need to work effectively, whether that means buying you a decent desk chair or upgrading the company’s web-conferencing system.
If you cannot afford reliable Wi-Fi, reliable Wi-Fi will be provided for you.
That 50 Mbps internet plan might have been just fine in your old life, but it could slow your work to a crawl now that you are trying to share your connection with a remote-working spouse, two home schooling children and your dog’s internet-enabled pet feeder. If that means upgrading your home internet service, your employer should provide an allowance to cover that cost.
If you decide to answer emails after hours, you have the right to stop answering emails after hours at any time.
Too many remote workers find themselves in a difficult position: Either you reply promptly to that 10 p.m. email from your boss, and establish the precedent that you’re available 24/7, or you ignore it until 9 a.m. the next day, and risk incurring the boss’s wrath—or just slowing down the team. That’s why employers and managers should establish clear, written expectations on things like after-hours messaging and email response times.
Now, what’s in your Bill of Rights?
Dr. Samuel is a technology researcher and the co-author of the forthcoming book “Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work…Wherever You Are."
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.
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