Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams in Ireland: What Managers Must Know

Managing a team that splits its week between a Dublin office and home is not a single legal topic. A manager touches several different areas at once: working time and the right to disconnect, requests to work remotely, health and safety at home, and how personal data is handled away from the office. This guide pulls together what Irish official sources say on each, so that managers leading hybrid and remote teams know where their duties and decisions arise. Ideas about how to run the team day to day are our own and are labelled as suggestions. It is general information, not legal advice.

Three areas managers should keep apart

• Working time and disconnecting. Covered by the WRC Code of Practice on the Right to Disconnect. We look at it below, and our dedicated guide to the right to disconnect code of practice goes into more depth.
• Requests for remote or flexible working. Covered by a statutory right to request, described by Citizens Information.
• Safety and data. Employers keep their health and safety duties when staff work from home, and data protection still applies to personal data handled remotely.

The right to disconnect: what the code says managers should do

The WRC Code of Practice for Employers and Employees on the Right to Disconnect is dated March 2021 in the document footer. It sets out three elements: employees should not routinely work outside normal working hours; employees should not be penalised for declining to engage with work matters outside those hours; and everyone has a duty to respect others' right to disconnect, for example by avoiding routine out-of-hours emails or calls.

For managers, several passages are directly relevant:

• The code says managers play a central role and should model the behaviour; where an employee's difficulty disconnecting appears linked to workload, performance or organisational culture, it says managers must act and ensure employees have clear goals that can, other than in exceptional circumstances, be delivered during normal working hours.
• The code says employers must keep records of hours worked under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 and must ensure employees get statutory breaks, rest periods, annual leave and public holidays, and that employees are given a written statement of their normal working hours.
• Policies should allow for legitimate out-of-hours contact, such as roster availability, sick cover or operational needs, and emergency communications should be the exception, not the norm.
• The code applies to all types of employment, including remote work, and says employers should check that their methods of recording hours suit remote working. It describes a time management system to record working and attendance as advisable.
• Employees are expected to manage their own working time, cooperate with any time-recording arrangement, be considerate of colleagues and notify the employer in writing of any missed statutory rest or break.
• The code suggests reviewing a disconnection policy annually.

On legal status, the code says a breach is not an offence, but the code is admissible in evidence and relevant provisions must be considered by courts, the Labour Court or the WRC. We do not describe how a particular case would turn out.

Requests to work remotely

Citizens Information (page last edited 21 March 2024) says all employees have the right to request remote working, from 7 March 2024, with the legal basis in Part 3 of the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023. The points that matter most to a manager receiving a request:

• A request can be made from the first day in a job, but the page says the employee needs 6 months of continuous service before the arrangement can start.
• The employee should submit it as soon as reasonably practicable, and at least 8 weeks before the proposed start. It should be in writing or through an online form and cover the days requested, the reasons, start date, duration and the proposed location and its suitability.
• The employer must give a decision within 4 weeks of getting the request at the latest. If it needs more time, it can take up to 8 more weeks and must say how much longer it needs.
• The page says employers should consider matters such as business needs, the employee's reasons, the WRC Code of Practice, whether the duties can be done remotely, available technology and health and safety.
• A refusal must be given in writing with reasons.
• If the employer has breached the WRC code, the employee can complain to the WRC within 6 months of the breach, extendable by a further 6 months for reasonable cause.

A separate right to request flexible working applies to parents of children under 12 (or under 16 where the child has a disability or long-term illness) and to certain carers. Citizens Information (page last edited 21 March 2024) describes similar timelines for it. These pages are dated, so check the current position before relying on them.

Our suggestion: when you receive a request, record the factors you considered in a short note, in the same order the official page lists them. That makes it easier to give written reasons if you refuse, and shows the decision was made on the merits and not on habit.

Health and safety when people work from home

Citizens Information (page last edited 12 March 2024) says the employer has the same duty of care for health and safety when an employee works from home. It lists duties such as assessing risks and applying appropriate control measures, making sure employees know the risks of home working, and providing safe equipment. The Health and Safety Authority's occupational safety and health guidance on remote working (labelled Version 1, with no publication date in the text we read) says responsibility for safety and health rests with the employer regardless of whether an employee works remotely. It also says employers should consult and communicate with employees, provide training and supervision, and not pass the financial costs of safety measures on to them.

On workstations, the HSA guidance says that where employees use display screen equipment as a regular part of their work, a risk assessment must be undertaken by a competent person, and that eyesight testing must be made available. Our guide to display screen equipment and hybrid working covers that in more detail. The guidance also raises psychosocial issues: its checklist asks whether there are arrangements for reporting work-related stress, difficulty separating home and work, and social isolation, and it notes that remote work can reduce social interaction and extend working hours, recommending regular communication including video contact.

Employees have duties too. The HSA guidance says they must cooperate, follow agreed safety procedures, use equipment correctly, and report defects and any work-related injury to the employer immediately.

Personal data and monitoring

The Data Protection Commission published a page on protecting personal data when working remotely, dated 12 March 2020. It is short and written for the early pandemic period, but its points still read as basic good practice: keep devices secure and locked, limit who can see the screen, use strong passwords, multi-factor authentication and encryption, use work email for work involving personal data, and lock away and securely dispose of paper records. For organisations it suggests ensuring staff follow email, cloud, network and login rules, using trusted networks and cloud services where possible, and keeping a written record of which paper records and files have been taken home.

The right-to-disconnect code mentions recording working hours, but how far an employer may go in tracking remote staff is a separate data protection question. We deal with it in our guide to employee monitoring and CCTV under data protection law. Our suggestion: before introducing any new tool that records activity from home, decide what problem it solves, tell staff clearly, and take advice.

Leading the team day to day (our suggestions)

None of the following is a legal requirement. They are practical ideas that sit comfortably alongside the duties above.

• Write down availability norms. Agree core collaboration hours and expected response times for each channel, and note who is on call and when, in line with the code's point about legitimate out-of-hours contact.
• Use scheduled sending. If you work late, schedule messages for the next working morning so you do not set an expectation of an immediate reply.
• Hold regular one-to-ones. Because the HSA guidance links remote work with reduced social contact, short regular check-ins are a simple way to ask about workload and wellbeing.
• Treat office and remote staff the same. Review how you share information, allocate interesting work and judge performance, so that being visible in the office is not the unspoken measure.
• Review workload, not just hours. The code asks managers to address excessive workload; if people are consistently stretched, look at priorities before blaming time management.
• Keep a simple record. Note agreed arrangements, reasons for decisions and any safety or equipment issues raised, in a place HR can access.

A Dublin note

The legal position is national. For a Dublin employer, the practical question is often which days the team is together and what that day is used for. Our suggestion is to use shared office days for work that really benefits from being in the same room, and to protect concentration time on remote days.

Learnsignal's offices are off Baggot Street in Dublin, and we offer in-person training from there. For current details, see our CPD pages.

Frequently asked questions

Can I contact staff outside normal hours?

The WRC code says employees should not routinely work outside normal hours and that out-of-hours contact for emergencies or legitimate operational needs, such as roster availability, is different from routine contact. Check your own policy and contracts.

How long do I have to respond to a request to work remotely?

Citizens Information says the employer must decide within 4 weeks of receiving the request at the latest, with a possible extension of up to 8 more weeks if it explains how much longer it needs. Check the current page, which was last edited on 21 March 2024.

Do health and safety duties apply when someone works from home?

Yes. Citizens Information says the employer has the same duty of care, and the HSA remote working guidance says responsibility rests with the employer regardless of where the employee works.

Does the right to disconnect mean staff cannot be contacted at all?

No. The code allows out-of-hours contact in genuine emergencies and for legitimate operational needs, and describes emergency contact as the exception and not the norm.

Where can I find the exact wording?

Read the WRC code, the Citizens Information pages and the HSA guidance directly, and check for updates before acting on any date or time limit quoted here.

Leading a hybrid team comes down to clear expectations, documented decisions and attention to safety and data, with the official codes as the baseline.