Ever wished you could decrease your working week to less than five days?
Government legislation introduced from June 2014 means that all employees have a legal right to request changes to their working hours and that employers have a legal obligation to answer them, giving a valid reason if the answer is no.
Until the law changed, parents of children under the age of 16, and those registered as carers for children or adults had the right to ask for a change in work patterns that better suited their home life. This change now means that all employees, regardless of home life, have the right to ask for one “flexibility request” per year. The only stipulation is that they just have worked for their employer for at least 26 weeks.
“It’s only a right to ask, and certainly not a right to have” – Steve Williams Head of equality services, Acas
Types of flexible working included in the legislation
- Part-time working
- Flexi-time – scope to change work hours outside of “core” business periods
- Job-sharing
- Working from home or remotely
- Compressed hours – for example, fitting a five-day week into four days
- Term-time working – paid or unpaid leave during school holidays
- Annual hours – agreed hours split into “set” and “reserve” shifts, worked as demand dictates
The government predicted at the time that the extension of rights would result in an extra 81,000 flexible working requests per year, taking the number to 182,000. A total of 144,000 were expected to be approved, 64,000 of which were for those who submitted a request on the day the law came into effect!
Source: Channelweb
At the time the law came into place, around 96% of firms already offered some form of flexible working and almost two-thirds already provided a right to request it. The extension to the flexible working rules came alongside the introduction of “parental leave” which, from April 2015, combined maternity and paternity arrangements into one package.
Virtual Sales Team has always offered flexible working hours in Northamptonshire.
If you are looking for a flexible part-time role either immediately or for the near future then please take a look at our Careers page to see if there is a role to suit you.
