Employee request for flexible working

Jane owns a small internet company and employs eight full-time staff. Jane focuses her time on the sales/marketing side of the business with her staff dealing with the administrative and technical aspects of her business. Her business has been a success.

Now Simon, one of her employees, has taken some odd days from his annual leave entitlement recently to help his elderly father attend various hospital appointments. His father has a medical complaint and as a result looking after himself is becoming significantly harder at his home.

Simon goes to see Jane and informs her that he has decided to move his father in with his family Simon informs Jane he wants to reduce his work hours to assist in looking after his father and gives Jane a written proposal of the hours he wishes to work.

As Jane has never received such a written request she is unsure what to do next. As her business is growing any reduction in her staffing hours will cause her a problem. Jane is aware that it may be hard to replace those hours by recruiting a new part-time member of staff as most people in the industry are the principal wage earners in their household. Jane is considering refusing Simon’s request but believes his reliability may drop if he needs to take time off if when his father needs him. Also, if she refuses Simon may leave and he is a loyal hard working member of the team.

The introduction of the flexible working regime now means, if the eligibility requirements are fulfilled, employees can request to work flexibly. Jane should firstly check Simon fulfils the eligibility requirements.In order to comply with the 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. Denise needs to arrange to meet with Dave (and a companion if he chooses to bring one) within 28 days 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 and notify him that he has the right to appeal this decision.

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 (the subsequent delay in the procedure would need to be agreed with Dave first).

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.

If you face a similar situation and would like some help dealing with it, please contact us for a free trial consultation meeting.