Flexible Working?

joanne0620

Does anyone have any knowledge of flexible working requests with regard to employers obligations to the employee? I know that they have to have legitimate business reasons to refuse such a request but do they have to explore every avenue, such as could one employees reduced hours become another employees overtime etc? Do they have to look at all that sort of thing before refusing?

I know that an employee (Me in this case!) does not automatically have the right to return to work part time (been on Maternity Leave), but after having my request refused (wanted to drop to 29 hours from 40), I just wondered what the employers obligations were? Have got some info from DH's HR dept and the DTI website but it's basically what is in our company policy.

Am going back to them with a new proposal and want to go to the meeting better prepared than I was last time!

Any advice much appreciated :beer:

Savvy_Sue

It might not be thought 'reasonable' to transfer your hours to someone else as overtime, which by its nature tends to be ad hoc / by agreement, BUT if there's another part-timer who would like to increase their hours then suggesting that you BOTH have different contracts might be acceptable.

hobo28

My understanding is that the only obligation the employer has is to listen to the proposal. They don't have to accept anything. So in your example, I guess their business reason would be that their costs will increase assuming overtime is paid more than regular rate.

Personally I think its a daft law as decent employers will always try to be as flexible as possible. Bad employers will just continue to say no. All making a law does is waste time and raise expectations.

Ice_Queen_112

Hi Joanne, Hope this helps.

Firstly, the employer has the duty to consider the application seriously, and only has a specific number of grounds ...

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 ...

to turn the application down under. In my experience (CIPD qualified HR practitioner with experience of hearing over 40 flexible working applications) these are so vague as to be able to cover pretty much any business situation if the business does not want to consider a more flexible form of working.

The legislation (in my opinion) is an a** as it emphasises heavily statutory timelines, rather than practicalities. For example, an employee cannot challenge the reason for turning down an application at tribunal, but can bring a claim if the employer for example did not hold a meeting to discuss the application within a certain number of days of receipt.

As you only have one shot at a formal application per 12 month period, I have always advised employees to informally discuss possibilities with their managers before submitting a formal application, and trying to work towards a compromise acceptable for all parties if the original idea is not going to work for the business.

There is a considerable onus on the employee "to prepare a carefully thought-out application well in advance of when they would like the desired working pattern to take effect" and to my mind, this would include the EMPLOYEE suggesting and "selling" scenarios that might enable more flexibilty. Certainly this could involve asking them to consider the possibility of reallocating work to other staff. My question (as the mediator, if you like between manager and employee) is always "will this arrangement be to the detriment of the business?" I would expect the employee to have thought this through beforehand and if the answer is yes or maybe, to have thought of ways in which a detriment may be avoided. In the example Savvy Sue gave, I would expect you to have spoken to the part timer and confirmed s/he is willing and able to pick up the hours.

Another point to note is that what is possible and what is not is not absolute. i.e. what would be reasonable for a company with 500 staff (i.e. paying extra for$ overtime) may not be reasonable for a small outfit with just 3 employees.

You post reads as if you have already made a formal application, have had it turned down and are appealing. You are allowed a companion at the meeting, if this would help, and you are also entitled to written confirmation of why your initial request was turned down. The DTI website does have a section "The RIght to Request, the Duty to Consider" which although long winded, is helpful and written in (fairly) clear language.

Hope this helps, let me know if I can help anymore.

joanne0620

Thank you for all your replies.

Ice Queen, I have just had my request refused and am going to appeal, basically I cannot afford F/T child care for DS and to be honest I do not want him to go into F/T childcare at 5 months old, so was hoping to do reduced hours (29 as opposed to 40), they have refused my request on the following grounds :-

Inability to reorganise work among existing staff.
Detrimental effect on customer service.
Detrimental effect on performance.

All cut & pasted from our HR policy and with no other explanation as to why these reasons apply in my case. To be honest I was ill prepared for the meeting and the HR lady knew I was out of my depth, so when she asked me how I proposed to do 40 hours work in 29 hours, it threw me & I panicked! I did ask at the time if my request was refused could I speak to DH & see if we could come up with something else,which we now have done after arranging for DS to be here there & everywhere! I've requested to do 36hours over 4 days so would in theory only be dropping 4 hours. I have posted my letter off today asking for an appeal so fingers crossed, I really don't know what I will do if this request is refused. I will be much better prepared for my next meeting, have already made lots of notes so I'll just have to see what happens.

Gambler

My partner had her request for 35 hours to 22 hours, but only on a 6 month trial basis. Admin elements of her role have been re-allocated.

Ice_Queen_112

Joanne - best of luck with your appeal! Fingers crossed.

real1314

"so when she asked me how I proposed to do 40 hours work in 29 hours, it threw me & I panicked"

You'd best hope that bit's in the record of the meeting. Clearest bt of indirect discrimination I've ever seen

You're expected to do 29/40th of 40hrs work in 29 hrs. Or are you asking them if you can do 29hrs for 40hrs pay?

The "reasons" they have quoted need to be backed up with reasoning.

e.g "Detrimental effect on performance" - why do they think that performance would be reduced because you work part time?
Do they think that you doing 40hrs and sepnding half your time wrrying about your son will increase your performance?

joanne0620

Thanks for your replies :beer:

Real - I only want to be paid for the hours that I work, I'm certainly not expecting money for nothing (Would be nice though! )

Also when HR asked me about my reasons for my request and I mentioned (amongst many other things) about the financial reasons, she turned round and told me that the company was not a charity! I appreciate that fact and understand that the business must come first in their view, but I think that comment was a bit uncalled for!

Savvy_Sue

I think in your position I would also be looking around to see what part-time / job shares there might be. I don't know what sort of thing you do, but if you could easily do it elsewhere, then it makes it easier to say "these are the hours I would like to work and if I can't work them here I'll work them elsewhere".

I believe our local council will accept applications for ALL jobs on a job-share basis, for example. Even if you don't yet know who you'd share with! Don't know what they'd do if the 'best' applicant only wanted a job-share on a full-time job.

I did make a request to go part-time / job-share in my previous job - but I think this is before the legislation took effect. There was tentative agreement as long as they could recruit someone to job-share with me. They couldn't. Then I found another family friendly job. The old job appointed someone else, but then she withdrew before starting. They ended up restructuring (a regular occurrence there!) to manage without me. I always knew I was irreplaceable ...

inkie

I wish you luck with this one - when I returned to work after DD1 - I dropped from FT (37.5 hrs) to 22.5 hours (3 days) - I actually sorted all of this out prior to going on mat leave so that I could enjoy the year off without worrying abour sorting it out later. The hours that i dropped were picked up by another staff member who wanted to increase hers (Community Midwives)

Hope it all works well