Flexible Working

Championing

Wellbeing

Any employee with 26 weeks of service with the same employer has the right to request to work flexibly; you don’t have to be a parent or carer to make such a request.

‘Flexible Working’ means altering the way employees work. This includes changing hours, either compressing them or changing to part-time or term-time only, or working wholly or partly from home.

How we can help employers

If you are an employer who receives a flexible working request, we can work with you to work out what is appropriate and how to deal with this request, as well as considering whether you can objectively refuse any such requests. We specialise in advising on how to approach these requests in such a way as to reduce the likelihood of a formal dispute arising. If you would like to know more about our approach, get in touch with the Team.

How we can help employees

If you have made a formal flexible working request and you believe it has been wrongly refused, we can assist in raising this as a grievance or escalating it as a claim.

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The future of flexible working

The pandemic has led to inevitable revolutionary changes, with businesses who claimed home working was simply ‘not possible’ in many roles managing to successfully run their businesses with their staff working remotely.

This has led to far more people wanting to work remotely and seeing that it is possible to do their jobs from home. Employers must now rethink how they will deal with flexible working request moving forward as the previous reasons for refusal of such working arrangements may no longer be valid reasons to refuse.

Reasons for Refusal

A formal flexible working request can only be refused for one of eight statutory reasons. These are: