Flexible Working

The concept of flexible working has become rather trendy these days. It is seen by most commentators as a really good thing. There is no doubt that employers who do not have a rigid approach to where, when and how work is done, have a larger pool of potential employees to recruit from. Those employers also have a better chance of retaining employees whose circumstances are such that they need to work flexibly.

There is also no doubt that larger organisations can embrace flexible working more easily than smaller ones. Larger organisations will find it easier to agree to flexible working requests and to put in place different ways of working flexibly.

However, in the real world, flexible working can be both a benefit and a curse to the small employer in particular. With this in mind, it is important that employees understand what their legal rights and obligations are.

Firstly, there is no right to work flexibly. The right is to be able to request to be allowed to work flexibly. Employees who have this right are in summary, parents, guardians, foster parents and their partners of children under the age of 6 or 18 if the child is disabled, who have or expect to have responsibility for the child’s upbringing. Since 6 April 2007, employees who are carers of adults where the person in need of care is married to or the partner of the employee or a relative of the employee or lives at the same address as the employee, also have the right to make a flexible working request.

In making the request, the employee can ask to change their hours, time of work or place of work. Any change that is agreed is permanent, to ensure both the employer and employee know where they stand.

A key and highly relevant part of the request, which must be in writing, is that the employee must specify any effect that the employee anticipates the proposed work pattern will have on the employer’s business and how such effects might be accommodated or addressed in practice.

Employees, particularly of small employers, are likely to get a much better response to request to work say, part-time, if they give a lot of thought to this obligation, because what can happen is that full-time employees bear the brunt of covering for part-time employees. So working part-time is great for the employee but a disaster for his or her overworked colleagues. Far from improving morale, flexible working in this case is likely to lead to resentment and friction. If the employee who wants to work part-time can propose a solution to avoid such a scenario, the request stands a far greater chance of being approved.

Published 17/08/2007.