In many small companies, working from home began as a favour: someone waits for a delivery, someone has a sick child. Over time it became normal, and nobody wrote down what was agreed. One person works on a private laptop shared with the family, another cannot be reached until noon, a third has the whole customer folder synced to a home computer. None of this is malicious. It simply was never decided.
This article proposes a one-page set of rules for a team of roughly five to thirty people. It is not an employment-law document; rules on working time, expenses and health and safety differ by country, so check them with your adviser. The page covers what a manager actually needs: equipment, access, availability and a way to ask for help.
Start with who and how often
Write one sentence at the top: which roles may work from home, and how often. For example, "office days are Tuesday and Thursday; the other days are the employee's choice, agreed in the team calendar." Roles tied to a place, such as a warehouse or reception, will have different rules. Say so openly rather than leaving it to rumours.
Equipment: decide what is allowed
The most useful question is whether work happens on a company device or a private one.
- Company laptop: the safest option and the easiest to support. Keep it in the company device inventory with an owner, an update schedule and disk encryption switched on.
- Private device: allow it only for defined tasks, such as e-mail and the shared calendar, and not for storing files. The rule can be as simple as "company files stay in the shared drive and are never saved to the local disk."
- Peripherals: state who pays for a monitor, a headset or a better chair, and who owns them. A short list with a limit is enough.
Add a line on printing and paper. Customer documents printed at home should be rare, and the rule should say how they are destroyed.
Access: few rules, strictly kept
Home networks are not managed by you, so the protection has to follow the person, not the room. The UK National Cyber Security Centre's guidance on home working lists the basics; for a small team they come down to five habits:
- A password manager for everyone, with unique passwords. See the password manager rollout for a practical sequence.
- A second step at sign-in for e-mail, the shared drive and the accounting system.
- Automatic updates on the laptop and the home router; ask people to change the default router password once.
- A screen lock after a few minutes, and the rule that nobody else in the household uses the work device.
- A VPN or an equivalent secure connection only for systems that need it. Most cloud tools do not, and an unnecessary VPN mostly slows people down.
Link to the same procedures you already use for a business trip: the risks of a hotel and a kitchen table are similar. Also say what to do if a device is lost, and whom to inform within the hour.
Availability: agree on core hours
Remote work fails more often on expectations than on technology. Agree on three things:
- Core hours, for example 10:00 to 15:00, when people are reachable and meetings may be scheduled.
- A response time per channel: chat within an hour, e-mail within a working day, a phone call for anything urgent.
- A visible status. A shared calendar or a chat status is enough. The point is that a colleague can see whether you are away for a doctor's appointment or simply silent.
If you already run a regular team meeting, keep it at the same time and make video optional but expected for the weekly one. A fixed weekly agenda helps remote people take part on equal terms.
Workplace and wellbeing
Ask employees for a workplace that is reasonably safe: a stable table, a chair they can sit on for a few hours, enough light. In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive explains that employers still have duties towards home workers; other countries have similar rules. A short self-check form once a year is often sufficient. Also encourage a clear end of the day, because people who work from home tend to work longer, not shorter.
One owner and one review
Name a person who receives questions and problems, usually whoever manages IT or operations. Put their contact on the page, with a second contact for absence. Plan a 20-minute review after the first quarter: what slowed people down, what was ignored, which rule needs to be removed because nobody can follow it.
Where AI helps and where it does not
An AI assistant can turn your notes into a clean one-page policy, produce a short checklist for new starters or summarise questions from the team into a revised version. It should not decide what is legally required, and employees should not paste customer data into a tool the company has not approved. The owner reads the final text before it is shared.
A first step
This week, write the page in plain language, no longer than one screen. Send it to the team, ask each person to reply "read and understood", and collect any exception that is truly needed. File the replies next to the device inventory. That alone replaces a year of informal arrangements.
