Flexible Working

Poppy1505

I currently work full time from 9.00am to 5.00pm in an admin role in the NHS. I am considering requesting to work 8.00am to 5.00pm 4 days a week under the flexible working policy, dropping to 34 hours per week. I wondered if anyone else had experience of submitting a flexible working request and what the response had been please? I couldnt afford to drop to less than 34 hours a week. Is there anything that would be more likely to get the request approved? There aren't any phones to cover in the role and no reception to cover.

74jax

Do you have a case to put forward for how the work you can't get done will get done?

TELLIT01

A lot of companies don't like people permanently working extended hours. You are looking to work a 9 hour day with only 1 30 minute break, which makes for a long day. It might not seem much of a change from what you are doing now but the extended working hours can get tiring over time.
Are others currently working the pattern you are proposing? If so it will help your case, and if not it may be due to the above.

Mrsn

I did a flexible working request a few months ago now, keeping the same hours but over more days owing to auto immune issues . I had to list how my request would impact upon my team and workloads etc and what I could do to mitigate that.

TellIT is right, employers will be wary of making days longer in general especially with very little break during the day as you run the risk of burning out

Les79

I used to approve/decline flexible working requests for a company and, due to the levels of staff we had (hundreds), it was relatively simple. Probably about 80% got approved.

The ones which DIDN'T get approved were because they offered absolutely nothing to the business. They wanted hours during our quiet times only when we were at near full capacity.

Your specific request doesn't look unreasonable on the face of it. But I am wondering if:

1. The business has a requirement for you to work between 8am and 9am. (you may have more luck going down to 4x days a week 9-5 if there's genuinely no work, but then again if you can make a good business case for working 8-9 then go for it!)

2. What is their staffing like in general? Do they have plenty of cover and will it be easy for them to juggle the shifts around a bit and still have the full 9-5 cover across 5 days? They'll need to shift 8 hours from somewhere to fill the hours that you are leaving vacant by dropping a day.

3. Or, in fact, can your work be carried out between 8-9 (for example if you answer emails which are usually sent by patients after 5pm each day)? That would offset 4 of the hours.

Have a read of this:

http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/g/r/11287_CoP5_Flexible_Working_v1_0_Accessible.pdf

Especially points 8-12.

Also, if you are making the request due to a protected characteristic (such as disability or potentially childcare) then point 8 does state " In considering the
request you must not discriminate unlawfully against
the employee." - I found that it was a great bit of leverage for getting marginal requests over the line (ones which hinder the company slightly).