You may not know it but earlier this year, the Government put a new legislation into effect. This legislation gave everyone the right to request flexible work. This can be greatly beneficial to those with young families, those needing to drop down a few hours or even those who are trying to get their sideline off the ground – I know of a few people who have exercised their right as it gives them some more time to spend with their families or working on their business plans for something else entirely. If the employer cannot say yes, they legally have to give you a valid reason why.
Citrix Go-To Meeting have put together a handy infographic (available to view here), designed to explain the ins and outs of this new legislation. After completing some research with British SMBs, it turns out only 55% were aware of the new legislation and almost half (46%) have no such flexible working policy in place – shocking, right?
Only 43% actually support the legislation and some others think it will impact on their business negatively. There also seems to be a generation difference in regards to support and opposition of the legislation – SMB bosses aged 25 to 34 are twice more likely to support it than those other 55.
What are the benefits of flexible working? Increased productivity, reduced stress, reduced unauthorised absences – it is easy to see why some bosses are getting behind the idea.
I currently work from home so can be as flexible as I want – I’m my own boss – however, it would be great if Steve could get some more flexibility in his working life. His area of work though doesn’t really lend itself to flexible working – he could request it and would most probably get it – however, at what cost?
I know that if I ever went back into the working world with someone else as my boss, I would be exercising my right. With a young family, elderly parents and a home to look after, I’d need to be as flexible as possible. I feel this legislation could greatly benefit us all, how about you?
Collaborative Post
We severely need this in America. I doubt it will ever happen but people are ridiculously overworked. Even if we did get something like this and people exercised their right, I'm sure employers would find "other" reasons to let them go. It's sickening.
Fingers crossed something like this makes it across to you x
Our company already did flexible working for all, whether formally or informally I currently informally compress my hours so I finish at 2.45 on a Friday to do one early nursery pick up.
However, they're now changing it so you have to work full core hours 10-12 and 2-4, so removing the ability for everyone who compresses hours to be able to do school pick ups. They're offering proper flexitime instead so you can build up hours, but that won't work as flexibly as previously. It now means people will be forced to reduce hours or pay for extra childcare and lose the work life balance that was previously offered. So not great. I'll have to try and reduce my lunch breaks further so I can finish earlier than the Friday core hours, and hopefully they'll let me do that still on full time hours until N starts school next year….and then it'll be even harder to work it all out.
Oh no, that's not good 🙁