18-11-2007
Flexible working looks set to be extended
The Government has recently announced that it is considering extending flexible working for parents with older children to help people achieve a better work/life balance.
I can already hear many business owners taking a sharp intake of breath, especially those running smaller enterprises with limited staff, as allowing parents to work more flexibly is often seen to increase the burden of others in the team.
The right to flexible working was introduced four years ago for parents of children under six. Under the latest proposals this would be extended to parents of children under the age of seventeen. It has been reported that this could lead to 4.5 million parents being entitled to work flexibly.
There has been alarm in the business community about how these changes will work in practice. Figures published by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform show that 91 per cent of employers who received requests for flexible working in the past year had approved them.
These figures are interesting. On the face of it they suggest that employers are doing their bit to help working parents – some would argue they had no choice, as legislation has boxed them into a corner over this issue.
There will be further consultation before these proposed changes come into force and there is no need to panic now. It is important to note that although an employer has to consider the application from an eligible employee to work flexibly, they do not have to agree to it.
The business grounds available to an employer to refuse a request for flexible working are many and varied. These include the burden of additional costs, detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand, inability to re-organise work among existing staff and impact on performance, insufficiency of work during the periods which the employee proposes to work, or planned structural change.
Employers have an obligation to go through the process of considering a flexible working request, whilst remembering a working pattern change is not a given at the end of the process.
I can already hear many business owners taking a sharp intake of breath, especially those running smaller enterprises with limited staff, as allowing parents to work more flexibly is often seen to increase the burden of others in the team.
The right to flexible working was introduced four years ago for parents of children under six. Under the latest proposals this would be extended to parents of children under the age of seventeen. It has been reported that this could lead to 4.5 million parents being entitled to work flexibly.
There has been alarm in the business community about how these changes will work in practice. Figures published by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform show that 91 per cent of employers who received requests for flexible working in the past year had approved them.
These figures are interesting. On the face of it they suggest that employers are doing their bit to help working parents – some would argue they had no choice, as legislation has boxed them into a corner over this issue.
There will be further consultation before these proposed changes come into force and there is no need to panic now. It is important to note that although an employer has to consider the application from an eligible employee to work flexibly, they do not have to agree to it.
The business grounds available to an employer to refuse a request for flexible working are many and varied. These include the burden of additional costs, detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand, inability to re-organise work among existing staff and impact on performance, insufficiency of work during the periods which the employee proposes to work, or planned structural change.
Employers have an obligation to go through the process of considering a flexible working request, whilst remembering a working pattern change is not a given at the end of the process.
