Your contract of employment should specify your hours, days and place of work. For example an office worker might be contracted to work Monday to Friday9 to 6 in a particular office or location with one hour allowed for lunch. This would mean that they would be working 40 hours per week. Flexible working can take many different forms. Typically the hours, days or place of work might be varied or adapted. Taking the previous example the office worker might ask to work from home for some or all of their working hours. This would be a form of remote working. They could request that they start earlier or later, to reduce or eliminate their lunch break, or to work more on some days and less, or not at all, on others.
Flexible working can allow employees to strike a good work / life balance and ensure that other commitments (such as care, education or personal commitments) can be accommodated. As a result, flexible working can be very important for an employee.
Flexible working can also be of benefit to employers. It is generally credited with improving staff retention and morale.
Anyone that has been an employee for 26 weeks or more can request that their employer change the hours that they are required to work, the times that they are required to work or where they are to work (whether at home or in the office). You do not have to be a parent or a carer in order to qualify. There are some requirements and these are dealt with in another video.
What are examples of flexible working?
A wide range of possible work patterns can be brought about by changing the employee’s hours, time of work and place of work.
Flexitime is one possibility with a flexible start, lunch/ dinner or other break times, and a flexible end time. There could be “core hours” built in when the employee must work. Core hours might be appropriate to deal with customers or patients for example.
Reduced hours or even reduced days are examples of flexible working and such patterns are often called compressed hours. For example, an employee might request not to work on particular days because they have other commitments on those days (for example looking after someone). An employee might ask not to work night shifts or other types of shifts.
Compressed hours would mean working more hours on certain days to allow for shorter hours on another day. For example, instead of Monday to Friday 9 until6 with a one hour lunch break, an example of flexible working could be 9 until6 with no lunch break on Monday to Thursday and 9 until 1 on Friday. Because they are working more hours Monday to Thursday they are able, at least theoretically, to work fewer hours on Friday. They would still be working 40hours a week. Hours could be compressed over different periods, for example, working 9 days from 9 until 6 with no lunch break and having one day off every fortnight.
Asking to job share is another example of flexible working. At the other end of the spectrum, a part-time employee might ask for additional hours. Homeworking or remote working, whether for all or part of an employee’s hours, is possible and often a popular request.
Eligible employees can make a request for flexible working but employers can legitimately decline any request - it depends on the request, the business and the knock-on effects the flexible working would have.
