The Digital approach is to rely on a questionnaire and the responsibility of the employee, rather than taking the complex and intrusive route of ensuring right of entry in the employment contract, as BT do. The questionnaire does assume, however, that appropriate training is given to ensure that the employee has sufficient knowledge to fill in the questionnaire, and that the manager monitors the responses. Similarly, Planning, Tax and Insurance is not framed for home workers. Each of these has to be individually negotiated with local offices. One area of concern is the division of liability and the extent to which employer's and home insurance cover the visiting of an employee in his home for meetings, either with colleagues or clients.
Security of information is another area of concern.
It is not so difficult to maintain computer security with a few simple rules about passwords and virus protection. Common sense says that if you lock the filing cabinet at work, then lock it at home. Whether this would be considered 'reasonable' is not clear. Employment law is simply not framed to cope with employed people working from home. Bearing in mind the number of government pilots, the guide supporting Flexible Working by the Employment Department, and the useful ISI guide with a similar purpose published by the DTI and DETR, it is unfortunate that the Government seems to have overlooked any practical form of legislative support.