O VERVIEW OF F LEXIBLE W ORKING Elspeth Wedgwood

U NIVERSITY POLICY Eligibility Care for children Care for disabled children Care for adults Other One application in a 12 month period Employed continuously for 26 weeks Change is permanent

REQUESTS Types of Request: Change to hours worked Change to times required to work Change to location of work Examples: Part timeJob share Compressed hours9 day fortnight Annualised hoursterm time working Home workingmobile working Varied start/finish times flexi time

P ROCESS FOR DEALING WITH REQUESTS Informal requests Formal requests /flexible_working_policy.pdf /flexible_working_policy.pdf

G ROUNDS FOR REJECTING A REQUEST 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 periods employee proposes to work Planned structural changes

R EQUESTS – NON STANDARD Early requests - maternity Out of core hours Lack of supervision Home working Limited / no breaks Compressed hours

COMMON CONCERNS Creating a precedent by saying ‘yes’ Competing requests Consistency among managers Legal risks if you reject a request Duration of flexible requests

UPDATE 2014 – Rights for all employees to request flexible working 2015 – Flexible maternity leave