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HR buddies

The Covent Garden HR Buddies is an initiative facilitated by Clarkslegal to offer the London HR community the opportunity to meet with like-minded peers, attend relevant seminars and workshops and boost your knowhow of the issues specific to this sector.
 
It’s free and open to anyone interested in HR. It sets its own agenda, so it can be purely social or facilitate presentations to help prevent HR problems for companies in the London area. So if you want to network face to face contact buddy@clarkslegal.com. Click here for further details about our next HR Buddies event.  

If, alternatively, you wish to network online with other HR professionals, then using the discussion forum below, is your ideal opportunity to do so.

Please feel free to post new queries or questions, and/or reply to ones already posted. All you have to do is register a few details, then you will be ready to post your thoughts.

You can post a new query by selecting the tab "new thread". To reply to a post, select that post and then choose the "reply" tab.
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 Right to request flexible working
 
Sarah_Ireland
38 posts
www.employmentbuddy.com
Joined
10/2/2006
Right to request flexible working
Posted: 29 Sep 08 10:08 AM
This week Buddy was asked: When are the government’s proposals to extend the right to request flexible working likely to become effective and will we be required to change our current flexible working policy?
creynolds
127 posts
5th
Joined
12/12/2006
Re: Right to request flexible working
Posted: 06 Oct 08 11:48 AM

Buddy says: A consultation is ongoing and will end on 18 November 2008.  It is likely that extension to flexible working rights will come into force in April 2009.  Many employers have a flexible working policy in place that reflects the existing statutory rights or goes beyond these.  Therefore, employers will need to ensure that their policy is updated to bring it into line the changes.    

Employers should not feel unduly concerned by the extension to flexible working rights because in practice, no significant new rights are being conferred on employees.  Employees are not being given a right to work flexibly.  Employees have never had this right and the proposals will not alter this.  The right is to request flexible working. 

Where it is not possible to accommodate an employee’s request for sound business reasons, employers are not required to agree to it.  However, it is important that employers take flexible working requests seriously.  Even where a request is made outside the scope of the flexible working legislation, employers should not dismiss it out of hand.   

Employer information: Currently, qualifying parents (which includes adoptive parents, foster parents and guardians) can request flexible working in order to care for children aged under 6 or a disabled child aged under 18.  Following the Walsh Review, the Government announced that it proposed to extend this right to parents with children aged 16 and under. 

Employees must have 26 weeks’ continuous service when they make their written application to their employer to work flexibly.  They can apply to change their hours, working times and place of work.  There must be a meeting within 28 days of receiving the application and a decision within the following 14 days.  A request can only be rejected for one of 9 specified reasons  (see buddy's factsheet and guidance note on flexible working for more details). 

When it comes to preparing for the new law, businesses may find that they do not need to do much, especially if they have already embraced flexible working.  It is believed that the existing procedure will not change significantly.  However, we await the Government consultation to see how this extension will be implemented in practice.
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