Are you up to speed on flexible working?

April saw various changes in employment law.

We covered many of these here  - one of which was the changes made to flexible working from April 6 2024.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development has reported that 49% of employers were not aware of the flexible working changes.

Harriet Gardner, employment law solicitor at Wake Smith takes a helpful, and more detailed, look the changes to flexible working.

This article will look at:

What changed from April 6?

What is flexible working?

How the changes affect employers and employees?

Your next move?

 

What changed from April 6?

Employees will be able to request flexible working from day one of employment. This differs from the pre 6 April 2024 changes which required an employee to have 26 weeks service before making a request.

Employers now have to respond to a request within two months, rather than three, and must consult with the employee about their request before rejecting it. Whilst an employer has always been required to meet with an employee before rejecting a request, an employer is now required to consult with an employee before doing so.   Additionally, Employees can now make a flexible working request twice a year rather than just once.

Employees no longer need to set out how any proposed changes will have an impact on the business or how their employer might deal with them.

 

What is flexible working?

Businesses can adopt a variety of ways to allow employees to work flexibly.

These include:

• Job sharing - two or more people do one job and split the hours.

• Remote working - working from somewhere other than a permanent office e.g. home.

• Hybrid working - a combination of working remotely and at the workspace e.g. office/business premises.

• Part time - working less than full-time hours.

• Compressed hours - working full time hours over fewer days eg 40 hours over four days.

• Flexitime - an employee chooses when to start and finish work within agreed limits but works certain core hours every day e.g. 10-4pm.

• Annualised hours - an employee works a certain number of hours per year but has flexibility when they work.

• Staggered hours - an employee has different start, finish and break times from other workers.

• Predictable hours or a set shift pattern - an employee has set hours they work instead of hours that may change week to week or day to day. It may be set hours for a whole week or part of it.

• Phased retirement - allowing people to take part of their pension while they continue to work some days.

How the changes affect employers and employees?

The changes aim to support constructive conversations between employers and employees about different working arrangements and how they might benefit both parties.

Businesses will be able to reject a request for one of eight business reasons and the new legislation has not made any changes to these. As a reminder these are:

• the burden of additional costs

• an inability to reorganise work amongst existing staff

• an inability to recruit additional staff

• a detrimental impact on quality

• a detrimental impact on performance

• a detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand

• insufficient work available for the periods the employee proposes to work

• planned structural changes to the employer's business

It is for the employer to decide whether the request is workable, depending on the business circumstances.

A meeting should be held to discuss the request and the content of the meeting should allow for reasonable discussion and consideration of the request. It is advisable to discuss the potential impact of both accepting and rejecting the request and what effect the request will have practically.

Employers will need to think about flexibility in advance to avoid being surprised by requests as soon as people start a job.

 

Your next move?

It would be wise to update all flexible working policies to ensure that the above changes are provided for in those policies.

If as a business you don’t already, ensure that when rejecting a flexible working request a meeting is held, only after having formally invited the employee to attend a meeting, Ensure that the meeting is minutes, those minutes are signed and that the impact for both the business and the employee is discussed before any decisions are made.

If you require any advice on the matters discussed in this article, please give our friendly employment team a call on 0114 266 6660.

Further advice

If you require any advice on the matters discussed in this article, please give our friendly employment team a call on 0114 266 6660, or click the 'contact us' button to submit an online enquiry.

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