As of June 30 2014, the Children and Families Act 2014 will extend the right to offer flexible working to all employees, so employers should be considering the implications of flexible working on their own organisation.
At the moment, the right of flexible working applies to employees who have children under the age of 17, or 18 if a child is disabled, or who are carers. However, from June 30, the statutory flexible working procedure for considering requests will be replaced with a duty on employers to deal with requests in a reasonable manner, and a statutory code of practice will be introduced to give guidance as to the meaning of “reasonable”.
Meanwhile, from April 2015, mothers, fathers and adopters will be able to opt to share parental leave around their child’s birth or placement, which will give families more choice over taking leave in the first year, meaning that fathers and mothers’ partners can take up to a year, or parents can take several months at the same time.
While these changes could cause disruption to employers, a recent study suggests that the benefits of flexible working could include increased employee productivity, the creation of effective ‘virtual’ teams, an increase in the number of senior women in the workplace, greater employee recruitment and retention and flexible retirement.
For example, employers could start to measure productivity in terms of output rather than hours worked and could also benefit from workers job sharing, working from home or going part-time.
As a seminar held this month highlighted, one of the myths about flexible working is that it holds back individuals from progressing because they are seen as lacking commitment.
However, this could be challenged through a cultural change in the organisation and by putting in place new measures to prove the value that employees add.