In recent years, more and more employees are looking for more flexible work.
You may have employees approach you to request flexible working hours, or potential employees looking for flexible working arrangements whilst they are in the recruitment phase.
Although many employees are looking into flexible working, it may not be feasible for your business to offer flexible working. Areas of employment law can make flexible working tricky to navigate.
In this article, we are going to cover what flexible working is, how your employees can request it, and how you can refuse and handle requests. If you need immediate advice get in touch with one of our experts here.
Flexible working written on note
What is flexible working?
Flexible working is an alternative to the traditional working hours (9 am to 5 pm). But it’s not limited to just the hours that an employee can work, but where they can work – such as remote working.
Essentially flexible working gives your employees more control over what hours they work and is an effective way for employers to put their employees first.
Flexible working practices
As we’ve mentioned, flexible working isn’t limited to only remote working, but there are other ways you can implement flexible working into your workplace. Here are some of the methods that you can implement.
- Job share – This is where two people work the same job, but you split the hours between them. So, instead of one employee working forty hours, two employees work twenty hours each.
- Remote working – This is where employees fulfil their roles outside of an office or site. For example, this could be at home or in a coffee shop.
- Part-time – This is where an employee works fewer hours than a full-time worker.
- Compressed hours – This is where employees will work their full-time hours over a shorter time period.
- Flexitime – This is where your employee will choose where they want to start or finish work but have core hours that must be worked.
- Annualised hours – This is where an employee needs to work a set amount of hours over a year, but have a degree of flexibility for when these hours are worked.
- Staggered hours – This is where each employee has a different start, finish and break times to each other.
- Phased retirement – This is where older workers choose when they’d like to retire, this can include them reducing their hours and/ or working part-time.
If you decide to implement any one of these new working pattern types into your business, then you need to agree with your employee first. You can do this through a flexible working contract that will outline what your employees can do and how they can work.
Benefits of flexible working for employers
Implementing a flexible working model into your business can have significant benefits for your business, we’ve collected a few of them together for you.
#1 Employee retention
This can be considered the most important benefit for employers. In a commitment. This mentally can help build a positive company culture and will help your business reduce the amount you spend on recruitment and training.
#2 Productivity
If your employees aren’t stressed about work, or overworked they are likely to be more productive while they’re at work. It’s also likely to reduce the amount of sick days an employee takes, flexible working will promote a better work-life balance, which will help the morale and productivity of your team.
#3 Recruiting
Flexible working is an attractive benefit for potential employees. Listing it in your job description can help you find the right candidate sooner. This also opens up your talent pool to more people, as prospective employees are more likely to prioritise businesses that offer flexible working.
#4 Extended opening hours
If your business implements a flexible working policy, you can extend your business’s working hours. This will allow you to let your employees work hours that suit them, and help you better satisfy your clients and meet customer demand.
Disadvantages of flexible working for employers
As with anything, there is always a disadvantage. It’s up to you and your business to decide whether the benefits outweigh the negatives.
#1 Supervision
If you’ve got employees working from home, they may need extra supervision to ensure that they are remaining productive.
#2 Fairness
When employees are making requests to work from home or other flexible working arrangements, you should treat everyone fairly. if you don’t the employee could raise a discrimination claim.
Flexible working policy
A flexible working policy sets out your business’s position on flexible working.
What to include
There are a few things that you need to include in your flexible working policy, they are:
- Who can work remotely?
- Working hours for flexible workers.
- Employee expenses.
- Staff wellbeing.
We’ll go into detail about each of these sections a little further. But you should start your policy with a small introduction to what the policy is.
For example, you could use:
Employer Advice recognises that many of our employees have responsibilities outside of work. To help you meet the obligations, we are accepting flexible working requests via the HR department.
If you would like to submit a request, download the form, or ask your line manager for a copy of the request form.
Fill out your details and submit them to your line manager. Each request will be given full consideration and discussed with you. The wider needs of the business will be taken into account when assessing the suitability of your request.
Ensure to edit it where necessary.
Who can work remotely?
You should clearly state who the eligible employees are. This section can include if you want employees to work a certain time period on-site before they can put in a request for flexible working.
Employees who make a flexible working application can only do so every twelve months, you should include what kind of change they can request.
Working hours
If you have employees who want to change their working hours, you should outline the restrictions in this section. This could include if you require employees to be in the office on a certain day of the week.
You can outline if employees can change when they start and finish work. This needs to be made clear in the policy.
Communication
If you allow your employees to work remotely you should state how often you’ll be keeping in touch with them and how. This can include how you will be conducting meetings, this could be via video call, phone calls or by using other methods.
Make sure your employees are aware of who it is they need to contact, if there is an emergency. (This is important in cases of lone workers).
Expenses
This section of the policy should outline who is required to travel or work at different places. You may need to consider this in your business expenses.
Likewise, if you need to supply your employees with special equipment. This section should outline the amount of the expense, and explain who will pay for it and how.
Staff Wellbeing
Use this policy to include how your business will support your employees. Your employees who are working remotely may go for prolonged periods of time without talking to anyone. This can start to affect their overall wellbeing.
You can use tools such as an employee assistance programme (EAP) to help your employees or share wellbeing tips with them to help improve their wellbeing.
Working abroad (optional)
some of your employees may already work abroad remotely as part of their job, in these instances, your policy should cover the terms of this arrangement. It’s important to outline the terms of this in the flexible working policy.
Who can request flexible working?
Any of your employees have the statutory right to request flexible working. It’s important to remember that this only applies to your team who are legally classified as an employee.
Your employees can only make the statutory request after 26 weeks of service, but as an employer, you have decided that you want to offer this to your employees sooner.
Making a flexible working request
Employees can make non-statutory requests whenever they wish and there isn’t a limit to the amount they can make unless it is stated in their employment contract. When making a request, employees should include:
- Make the request in writing.
- Put the date of their last request (if applicable)
- Stat what changes they want to make.
- State whether it is a statutory request for flexible working. (if applicable)
Flexible working request meeting
Once your employees have put in a request for flexible working you should organise a meeting to talk through their request, and determine whether it’s a formal request or not. This meeting should be held before you make your decision.
In this meeting, your employee has the chance to give you the reason for their request. From here you and your employee can put together a plan for them to work flexibly. This could be setting up a trial period to see how it works for both the business and your employee.
Your employees can bring someone to the meeting with them, this could be a co-worker or a member of their trade union. This isn’t a statutory right, and it’s up to you whether your employee brings someone or not.
Can I refuse a flexible working request?
An employer can only refuse an application on the following grounds:
- Detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand.
- Inability to reorganise work among existing staff.
- Inability to recruit additional staff.
- Detrimental impact on quality.
- Detrimental impact on performance.
- Insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work.
- Planned structural changes.
Some examples of an unreasonable working request would be “The management team don’t like the idea of the employees’ working pattern being different, or having them working from home” or “It’s not part of the company culture to have a flexible working”
If you decide to decline the request, you need to let your employee know what the business reason for the request being declined is. Employees don’t have the right to appeal the request, but you may want to allow this in your internal policies to avoid grievances.
Make sure that the decision isn’t made on discriminatory grounds, no business reason should relate to the protected characteristics.
Speak to an expert
Employer Advice has a team of dedicated HR and employment law experts who only work with employers.
With over 80 years of experience in helping employers take the stress of handling their HR and employment law obligations.
Get in touch with one of the Employer Advice experts on 0800 470 0613.