Flexible hours - request refused.

N20Y1D

My wife sent her employee a letter on the 14th of September requesting a change to her working hours, this wasnt a reduction in hours merely shifting her start and finish time from 09:30-17:30 to 09:00-04:30 to and reducing her lunch from 1 hour to half hour so that she is able to collect our son from nursery.

Today she received a phone call from her bosses sidekick almost 2 months later just to tell her that this request has been refused and given the reason "it wont work". She is currently on the phone to her companys HR dept as i told her she must get everything in writing before she can take this further.

I just wondered if anyone has any pointers on matters like this?

cheepskate_2

i assume that you are refering to the family friendly legislation.
This leg. can be refused on the grounds that the company cannot do so , can remember the tech. term. If it is a big company then really there should be no problem.
If she has not put it under the ffl. and her company is big then reapply using the legislation, sure it should be on the net, and the company should get back within 28 days in writing .

hjb123

It really depends on the company, the size and how many people work there etc. Does anyone else do the same job or is there a need for her to be there after 430?

She could always speak to ACAS or the CAB and see if they can offer any advice?

specsappeal

Hi, yes it's true that they don't have to change your hours if they say they can't unless your chid is disabled and then they cannot refuse. seems petty for them to say no though as it is only a slight change.

Emmzi

She has a right to ask but no right to be given.

She should be given a proper reason why not. Find out what this is before automatically 'taking it further', as it may be valid.

Most common reasons would be eg need to cover phones for customers until 5pm.

Savvy_Sue

Emmzi wrote:

Most common reasons would be eg need to cover phones for customers until 5pm.

If the OP's wife is aware of any issues like this then it would probably have been useful to have said in her request how she foresaw them being met: regularly being there from 9 am isn't any use if the switchboard isn't on before 9.30 am, and colleagues can get narked if one person never gets to work the dregs of the day at closing time.

But my understanding is that there does have to be a reason NOT to grant the request, other than "If one person asks everyone will want to do this ..."

ACAS is good suggestion. Also Working Families.