Flexible working revamp: Nothing to be scared of?

The government has launched a consultation aimed at making it easier for businesses to deal with flexible working requests, ahead of a change in the law next April extending the right to request flexible working to parents with children under the age of 16.

The law currently gives parents with children up the age of six the right to request flexible working. While organisations will still have the right to refuse a request if they have "legitimate business concerns", the government estimates the extended right will lead to more than a quarter of a million employees changing their working hours.

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The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform-led (BERR) consultation will seek views from business and suggest ways to reduce the paperwork involved in dealing with requests.

Employment relations minister, Pat McFadden, said in a statement: "The right to request flexible working has worked well because it helps employees to balance their home and work lives but at the same time gives employers the right to say no where there are legitimate business concerns.

"Parenting requirements don't end as children get older. We think it is right to extend this successful scheme and help parents of older children access the flexibility they need."

Philip Flaxton, CEO of not-for-profit organisation Work Wise UK, which campaigns for the adoption of smarter working practices, believes businesses should be given "sufficient time to prepare" for the change and says some may well struggle to adapt to the change, especially smaller businesses.

He told silicon.com: "There will be businesses that will struggle and will find it difficult. And there could well be businesses or organisations in the SME sector - if you employ six staff and three of them come to you and say 'I want to request the right to work flexibly' I can see how that could have a detrimental effect and a significant impact on the running of your business."

An independent report commissioned by the government found the flexible working extension may prove to be a double-edged sword.

Sainsbury's HR director and the report's author Imelda Walsh said: "On the evidence I have seen, I do not believe that this extension will add significantly to business costs. To put this in perspective, it is clear from the existing practices of many large, medium and small employers that they already operate 'open to all' flexible working policies, so in practice many employees will already have access to flexible working."

She added: "Equally many employees will not want to change their working arrangements. As more employees are covered by the right to request, I also expect that the number of requests which will be refused may rise as employers consider the overall impact on their business."

However, flexible working doesn't have to mean bad news for businesses, according to Flaxton - especially for larger organisations, citing BT's long-running love affair with mutable working patterns. "Ninety-two per cent of women return to work after maternity leave with BT because they have a flexible working culture," he said. "Out of their 115,000 staff, 77,000 of them now work flexibly and 12,000 of that 77,000 are registered home workers. So I think it's down to the individual organisation."

When it comes to preparing for the new law, Laura Williams, senior researcher at not-for-profit research consultancy The Work Foundation, said businesses may find they don't need to do too much - especially if they have already embraced flexible working.

She said: "Many employers offer flexible working to parents anyway and many of them offer it to all staff so for those that already having these type of working practices in place and already having the opportunity for staff to talk to their managers about changes to their working patterns I don't think it's really going to impact on them that much. It's a right to request - it's a right to have the conversation about it rather than the right to have the exact pattern that you first asked for."

Williams added that flexible working requests made by parents with children under six have tended to be modest, rather than radical - which suggests organisations won't need to seriously overhaul how they are run or resourced and the burden on IT to invest in remote working tech may not be so heavy.

"Some of the research finds people just want to start half an hour earlier and finish half an hour earlier," she explained. "Obviously some people want more radical changes but for the majority of people it won't be that big an impact on the [business'] bottom line."

Businesses may even reap rewards for giving a greater proportion of their staff a greater say in when and where they work, said Williams: "Being seen as an organisation or an employer that helps people to balance work with other aspects of their life is a good thing in terms of attracting and retaining people."

Another benefit of the law change is that it "formalises some things that maybe haven't been formalised before", according to Williams, and therefore "encourages more honesty" - meaning staff with children will no longer have to feel forced to slip off early or call in sick in order to keep up with childcare commitments.

Signs are, the move towards more flexible working is unstoppable, according to Work Wise UK's Flaxton. "You look at the way technology has evolved over the last five years - with broadband and mobile technology and so on - I think it's becoming more and more apparent to the 29 million people who are employed currently in the UK that going to a place of work Monday to Friday 9-4, 8-5 whatever it is, this culture of presenteeism belongs to a bygone era," he said.

And Flaxton's view is that "the reality of going virtual" is here, certainly for smaller businesses. "There are tremendous cost savings that can be achieved because, for a start, you don't need any buildings," he said.

"Probably in three to five years' time [flexible working] will become the norm. And I think people won't talk about flexible working or remote working or teleworking and all the terms that we give it right now. I think they'll just say, well this is how we work, this is working," Flaxton added.

The BERR consultation on the right to request flexible working can be found here. The closing date for responses to be submitted is 18 November 2008.

The government is also consulting on giving employees the right to request training from their employers.

A recent IT Job Board survey found widespread views among techies that the industry has not adapted to flexible working, while some claim flexible working has had a negative effect on their career progression.