Parents of children under the age of six, or disabled children under the age of eighteen, and who have worked with their employer continuously for at least 26 weeks, have the right to work more flexibly.
Eligible employees can request a change to the hours they work, a change to the times when they are required to work, or can ask to work from a different location.
Examples of different work patterns can include:
- flexi-time
- job share
- compressed hours
- home working
- term-time working
- shift working
- annualised hours
Requests must be made in writing and an employer has a statuatory duty to consider the request seriously. Employers must make arrangements to meet with the employee 28 days of receiving the request and should allow employees to be accompanied at this meeting by a fellow worker, if they request it.
Within 14 days of the meeting the employer must then write the employee to either agree to a new work pattern, and confirm start date or to provide clear business grounds as to why the application cannot be accepted and set out the appeal procedure.
There are eight specific business reasons set out in the legislation that allow for refusal and employers must prove that at least one applies to the individual circumstances.
Examples include where there would be a burden of additional costs, where there would be a detrimental impact on quality, where it would be an insufficiancy or work during the periods that the employee proposes to work.
Links
- ACAS
- Advisory, Conciliation and Arbatration Service.
- Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
- Includes articles and information on flexible-working and working-time.
- Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform
- Employers for Work-Life Balance
- Aims to help all UK organisations implement and continuously improve sustainable work-life strategies which meet customer needs, corporate goals and enhance the quality of life for individuals.
- Equality and Human Rights Commission
- The Equality and Human Rights Commission champions equality and human rights for all, working to eliminate discrimination, reduce inequality, protect human rights and to build good relations, ensuring that everyone has a fair chance to participate in society.
- Flexibility
- Seeks to bring together a network of companies and organisations with an interest in new ways of working and associated issues, which will work together to raise awareness and publish information, to run seminars and conferences, to undertake research and to carry out other related activities as appropriate.
- Directgov: Employees
- A user friendly guide to UK employment law.
- Working Families
- Working Families helps children, working parents and carers and their employers find a better balance between responsibilities at home and work.
- Working Balance
- People management agenda in public service.
