What does flexible working mean?
Flexible working means offering your employees alternative work patterns and arrangements including reduced hours, permission to work from home etc. There are many good reasons for providing flexible working arrangements. For example:
- It promotes equality of opportunity in employment for many people; especially for women and people who have disabilities
- There is evidence to show that most employers in Northern Ireland believe that employees should be able to achieve a satisfactory work/life balance, and that the provision of flexible working arrangements either has no negative impacts on their businesses or that it delivers positive benefits, such as increased employee motivation, commitment and productivity, less absenteeism and better employee relations.
- Having flexible working practices often encourages staff retention and cuts down on recruitment costs.
Many employees enjoy legally enforceable employment rights which give them entitlements to flexible working arrangements. It would, therefore, be unwise to make snap decisions, especially refusals, about your employees’ requests for flexible working as you must follow legally enforceable procedures and/or provide reasoned, fair and justifiable decisions.
This does not mean that the needs and rights of employees will necessarily over-ride the needs of an employer’s business, or vice versa. But the nature of an employee’s legal rights will often require an employer to weigh their business needs against those of their employee in order to reach an appropriate and proportionate balance between the two.
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