Everyone's Talking About Flexible Working
The coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has completely shifted the way we work and live. Companies have had to quickly adopt new initiatives and technologies to ensure employee safety whilst maintaining productivity. Working from home has now become the normality for many of us and adapting to these new ways of working is essential for business continuity.
The UK has been ahead of the curve with the right to request flexible working having been in place since 2014 and after more than a year of enforced home working, UK employers are anticipating an influx of flexible working requests as restrictions lift and staff begin to return to the office.
What is flexible working?
Flexible working can refer to a variety of arrangements includes but is not limited to; part-time work, ‘compressed hours’ over fewer days, remote working, ‘flexitime’ and job sharing arrangements.
Flexible working arrangements can be formal or informal. Some organisations choose to amend the written employment contract when new working arrangements are put in place, and/or include flexible working policies in the employer’s handbook. However some forms of flexible working, such as working from home, are likely to be offered informally, for example in agreement with an employee’s line manager.
Examples of kinds of flexible working that you can request include:
- reducing your hours to work part-time
- changing your start and finish times
- having flexibility with your start and finish time (also known as ‘flexitime’)
- doing your hours over fewer days (‘compressed hours’)
- working from home or elsewhere (‘remote working’)
- sharing the job with someone else (‘job share’)
The right to request flexible working
The legal position is that all employees with at least 26 weeks’ continuous employment are able to make a statutory request for flexible working, in writing, for any reason. A new request can be made once every 12 months. Where a request is made, the employer must deal with that request in a reasonable manner and notify the employee of the outcome, including any appeal, within a three-month period, unless that timeframe is extended by mutual agreement.
Making a request
When making a request for flexible working there is no form however in order to qualify as a statutory request, it must:
- Be in writing.
- Be dated.
- Explain the change they would like to their working pattern.
- Explain when they would like the change to come into force.
- Explain what effect the change would have on the business.
- Explain how such effects might be dealt with.
- State that it is a statutory request.
- State if the employee has made a request previously and if so when.
