Member Article

What is flexible working?

Flexible working means a type of working arrangement which gives a degree of flexibility on how long, where and when employees work. The flexibility can be in terms of working time, working location or the method of working.

Flexible working practices include:-

• Part-time working: work is generally considered to be part-time when staff are contracted to work less than full-time hours.
• Term-time working: an employee remains on a ‘permanent’ contract but is allowed to take either paid or unpaid leave during school holidays.
• Job-sharing: a type of part-time working where two or more people share the responsibility for a job bettween them.
• Flexitime: allows staff to choose, within specified set parameters, when to start and finish work.
• Compressed hours: compressed working weeks, or fortnights, do not necessarily involve a reduction in total hours or any extension in individual choice over which hours are worked. The central feature is the re-allocation of work into fewer and longer blocks during the period.
• Annualised hours: the period within which full-time staff must work is defined over a whole year.
• Home-working: staff regularly spend time working from home.
• Mobile/teleworking: this allows staff to work all, or part, of their working week at remote location from the employers workplace.
• Career breaks: career breaks or sabbaticals, are protracted periods of leave, normally unpaid, for up to five years, or more.
• Zero hours contracts: are contracts in which an employee has no guarantee of a minimum number of working hours, so they can be called upon as and when required and are paid only for the hours that they actually work. {The Government have decided to review this particular contract later this year}

The aforemntioned list is not exhaustive. Flexible working could also include; self-rostering, shift swapping or taking time off for training.

Research carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has found the most common forms of flexible working in organisations, in order of popularity, were:-

• part-time working
• job-sharing
• flexitime
• term-time working

The potential benefits of flexible working

CIPD research carried out by Kingston University and others, found that; employees on flexible contracts tend to be more emotionally engaged, more satisfied with their work and are more likely to speak positively about their organisation and less likely to leave.

The legal position

In April 2003 the Government introduced ‘the right to request flexible working’. This originally gave parents with a child aged under six, or parents of a disabled child under the age of eighteen, the right to request flexible working arrangements.

This right to request has been extended:-

• from April 2007 to the carers of certain categories of adults; and
• from April 2009 to the parents of children aged under 17

and will be further extended:

• to all staff with at least 26 weeks’ continuous employment, regardless of whether they are parents or carers. This is scheduled to be introduced in 2014

In April 2010 similar procedures were introduced to enable requests for some flexibility with time off work for study or training.

A new employment status known as ‘Employee Shareholder’ is to be introduced in September of this year. Employee Shareholders will give up certain employment rights, including the right to request flexible working or time off to train, as well as waiving unfair dismissal and redundancy pay rights.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Andrew Dane .