New evidence suggests that many businesses would support changes to make it easier and quicker for staff to request flexible working.
Commercial law firm Baines Wilson surveyed 57 HR professionals attending its employment law seminars this autumn.
Almost two-thirds would readily scrap the requirement for employees to wait 12 months after a flexible working request is refused before making a new one.
And 79 per cent say the three-month period that employers are given to consider flexible working requests is too long.
Joanne Holborn, partner and head of employment at Baines Wilson, believes that employers may be more willing to embrace flexible working as an aid to recruit staff in what is an increasingly tight labour market.
She said: “Every business that I talk to at the moment is struggling as far as recruitment is concerned.
“Research suggests that flexibility is more important to many employees than pay at the moment. Offering flexible working can be an effective recruitment tool.”
She added: “Most of those completing our survey were HR professionals – it would be interesting to see if business owners take a similar view.”
Any employee who has worked for their employer for 26 weeks has a right to request flexible working.
This could cover going part-time, changes to start and finish times or working from home some or all the time.
Employers can refuse such requests on any one of eight statutory grounds.
- planned structural changes
- the burden of additional costs
- quality or standards will suffer
- they won’t be able to recruit additional staff
- performance will suffer
- won’t be able to reorganise work among existing staff
- will struggle to meet customer demand
- lack of work during the periods you propose to work.
But the businesses attending Baines Wilson’s seminars – held in Carlisle, Lancaster and Newby Bridge – heard that there are circumstances where refusal could give rise to a sex-discrimination claim.
Joanne said: “Employment tribunals recognise that women generally have more childcare commitments so refusing flexible working might be indirectly discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010. The employer can still refuse a request but, in this instance, has to provide good business reasons to support the grounds for refusal.”
The half-day seminars also covered other topical employment law issues such as workplace mental health, how employers should treat staff going through the menopause, managing performance when staff are working from home and employers’ duties to prevent sexual harassment.
All the attendees surveyed agreed that the pandemic has affected the mental health of employees, and that employers should be ready and willing to talk about the impact of the menopause in the workplace.
Baines Wilson is planning more employment law seminars in 2022.
Flexible working systems now ‘key to attracting talented workforce’
