Flexible Working requests
These can provoke an interesting range of reactions amongst employers including a rhetorical question relating to which particular heavenly body the employee may be residing on.
Why flexible working may be important.....
- The Government appears to be very keen on flexible working and have hugely extended the range of employees who are eligible to make a statutory request to their employees to consider a flexible working pattern (a “flexible working request”); This includes parents of children under 18 years old and also those with adult caring responsibilities;
- A common theme running through employee engagement surveys is that most employees would prefer flexible working options to a pay rise – useful to remember in these lean financial times;
- Those same surveys invariably report that there is a feel good factor which arises when an employee has some say or some input into their working patterns.
...and so what you should do...
It is clear that flexible working and flexible working requests are not going to go away and as an employer, you may therefore wish to learn to live with the current landscape and consider what may be possible.
Flexible working does not just mean going part time, or taking every other Friday afternoon off. Home working, change of job location, compressed hours (working a condensed working week of longer days but the same overall hours), job shares, flexitime and changing the times when employees could be required to work all fall within flexible working. Why not develop a written policy on flexible working?
Consider extending opportunities across the workforce. If particular aspects of flexible working cannot be accommodated, put together an impact assessment which will help to explain why. Consider each role within the business.
What should be your stance if you receive a statutory request but feel unable to agree to it?
The statutory right is only a right to apply and a duty on employers to consider – no employee has the legal right to be granted flexible working as of right.
Remember that there may be a legal duty to follow the “right to request and duty to consider” procedure. Ensure that meetings and arranged within the statutory time scales and that employees are prompted to set out in writing what they consider the impact would be and how it could be accommodated. It is perfectly acceptable to offer an alternative pattern that the employee may not have considered or to offer a “trial period” to see whether the new pattern would work. You should try to be consistent in deciding upon the sorts of working patterns that you can tolerate.
Disclaimer – The contents of this page are provided for general guidance only and do not replace the need to obtain legal advice about any given situation.
