A note of the changes and need to develop a whole-workplace approach to flexible working

• Employees no longer need to be continuously employed for 26 weeks before making a flexible working request. They may make a request to work flexibly from day 1 of their employment.
• Employers are not permitted to refuse a request unless the employee has been consulted.
• Employees are entitled to make two requests in any 12-month period rather than one (only one request can be live at any one time).
• The time for an employer to make a decision is reduced from three to two months (although it will remain open for the parties to agree a longer period).
• Employees won’t have to explain what effect, if any, the employee thinks their requested change would have on the employer and how any such effect might be dealt with. Although the effect is of course going to be relevant. 
  

• The changes apply to statutory requests for flexible working, arrangements can still be agreed informally if employees do not make a statutory request.

• Acas has produced a code of practice dealing with statutory requests for flexible working. 

• See the specific flexible working guidance for schools. 

• The changes reflect changing culture and expectations in the workplace, they do not shift significantly the existing legal landscape of flexible working requests, there are still stipulations regarding the content of the written request and employers can still decline the request on one of eight business reasons (such as the inability to re-organise work amongst existing staff or a detrimental impact on quality or performance).

• Employers in hard-to-flex sectors are competing with sectors offering flexible working. Employers able to adopt a whole-workplace approach to flexible working are able to offer staff a more inclusive workplace with improved wellbeing and work-life balance enabling them to better retain and attract experienced, high-quality staff.

• Please contact us if you would like support to develop a whole-workplace approach to flexible working. To support our clients in recruiting and retaining staff we have teamed up with Timewise, a social enterprise with experience in hard-to-flex sectors including education and construction and have worked with Acas and the Department for Education. 

• Our next Education HR Networking group will be on 16 May 2024 and we will be joined by Nicola Pease, from Timewise. In this session we will be discussing more about the flexible working changes, and how this could work within the Education Sector. The networking group is for HR professionals, CFOs, business managers and other staff with HR responsibilities in schools and trusts. If you are interested in attending the networking group the link to book is here.

• Ensure policies and procedures are up-to-date when dealing with statutory flexible working requests. Timewise have produced a helpful flexible working checklist which is available here. 

• Consider the impact on recruitment and whether to advertise that a role can be performed flexibly.

• Consider whether you can make your workplace more flexible and encourage a more flexible culture, noting the potential benefits for recruiting and retaining your best staff.

• Attend the next Stone King Education HR Networking group session to continue the discussions. 

See our previous article on the changes to flexible working, written before the changes came into effect.