1. Employee request for flexible working
Denise owns a small software company. She has six members of staff who all work full-time, 9 to 5, in the office. She currently takes care of sales and marketing herself and leaves most of the technical work to her team. Her business has grown rapidly in the 3 years that she has been operating and she believes that so far she has managed quite well to keep on top of employment matters using various online resources.
One of her employees, Dave, has taken some odd days from his annual leave entitlement recently to help his elderly father attend various hospital appointments. His father has osteoporosis and is finding it increasingly difficult to manage to look after himself at home.
Dave pops into Denise’s office today and tells her that he has agreed with his wife that Dave’s father will move in with them both in the near future. Dave’s wife works part-time and will look after his father when not at work. Dave wants to reduce his hours so that he will be able to look after his father when his wife is unable to. He gives Denise a letter setting out the details of his request.
Denise is not sure what to do. The business is growing and she cannot afford to lose the hours that Dave is proposing to drop. She knows that it would be hard to replace those hours by recruiting a new part-time member of staff as most people in the industry are the main bread winners in the household, who are looking for full-time work. She is minded to refuse Dave’s request but thinks that she might then find that he becomes unreliable if he needs to take time off at short notice when his father needs him. It may be that Dave chooses to leave the company. He is only a few years from retirement, he has paid off his mortgage and his children left home a few years ago to start on their own careers. Denise is worried about losing Dave’s skills and knowledge.
Comment: All employees now have the right to request to work flexibly. Initially it only applied to parents, then it was extended to carers, and now it applies to all who meet a minimum service criterion.
In order to comply with the Flexible Working Regulations, Denise should first check what Dave has written to see if it complies with the employee’s duties as set out in the Regulations. The onus is on Dave to state in his letter what impact he believes his reduction of hours will have on the business and to propose any arrangements which could offset any detriment. If he has not done so, Denise could explain this requirement to Dave and ask him to resubmit his request when he has done so. This is a good tactic because it will force Dave to consider the problems his proposal will have for Denise. He may well propose a different arrangement, such as working from home part of the time or varying his working hours, which may have a lesser impact.
Once Dave has submitted his request in the required form, Denise needs to give it due consideration. If she is not minded to agree to the request, Denise could arrange to meet with Dave (and a companion if he chooses to bring one) to discuss his request. It may be that Denise can negotiate a different variation with Dave at the meeting if his proposal is going to prove problematic.
If Denise is not able to agree to Dave’s request she needs to ensure that her reason for this decision falls into one or more of the following business reasons:
• Burden of additional costs
• 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
If Denise does refuse the request she needs to give Dave in writing the reason for her refusal.
As Denise is concerned about losing Dave, she may wish to agree to his request on a trial basis. She may be able to propose an alternative arrangement that would be acceptable to Dave. It may be that she can advertise for a part-time replacement to test her assumption that it would not be attractive to potential recruits before coming to a final decision. As Denise’s company continues to expand it is likely that she will encounter more such issues from members of her staff. Part-time and other forms of flexible working may prove to be popular among her new and existing staff members, so she would do well to consider promoting such forms of working whenever advertising for new staff. It is normally easier to accommodate changes to working patterns when there are already a number of staff members working part-time.
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