More parents to get fliexible working arrangements

[duchesse]

The government is planning to extend the right to request flexible working to parents of under 16s.

i'm very luck i work 4 days a week (half day at home spread over the course of the week) and do flexible hours (but so do the vast majority of people - we have core hours that we have to be there).

tbh i'm more effective working 4 days - i plan my time better and do tend to actually work more.

flexible working has benefits for all - its about give and take.

problem with these regs are if you are starting a new job, or want to move jobs. you have no right to ask for flexible working until you've been employed for 6 months.

I thought that if your employer turned down your request for flexible working, they had to give really good reasons why?

I don't live in the UK so I don't know how it works in practice; this thread is really interesting.

I live in Spain where part time working is a right for parents with children under 5. However, any Spanish person I have ever asked about this says that yes, that's the law, but in practice you'll find that actually using this law will have a very bad effect on your career. Therefore most Spanish "career" women go back to work when their babies are only 4 months old.

I do work part time and it is great for me - my husband works part time too, so we share looking after our baby. His hours were harder to fit in, so he doesn't do as much as me and I am the main earner - but this isn't really a problem - we are just SO lucky to be able to both spend so much time with our baby and I am very lucky to be able to maintain my career.

I feel very strongly that whenever part time or flexible working is discussed that fathers should take more of an interest and get more involved. There is no reason why fathers shouldn't be looking after their children more, especially after the first 6 weeks. Seems to me that this would solve all sorts of issues - marital strife (misunderstandings), baby missing out on father, women getting overlooked at work because they're seen as a riskier bet than men (due to maternity leave/flexi working)...etc etc....

It really depends on the sort of service the business is providing. I run a care service for older people and it is impossible to get away from the fact that our service users want to get up between 7am and 9am so if people can't work then we can't employ them. We can factor in a percentage to overstaff to allow for sickness and children who need parents at home unexpectedly but if none of these catastophes arise in a particular week we are then overstaffed and have no work for some members of staff. I need to have my office open to the public 9am to 5pm so I need one admin member of staff in between these times. We try to be symnpathetic to requests for flexibility ( and I have allowed people time off for sick pets etc.) but small businesses do find it difficult to comply with requests for flexible working. I'm afraid that even though we are scrupulous in our equal opportunities recruitment policy my hear quickens when the only applicants for an advertised job are the over 50's with no committments.

I'm all for it, I work flexible working hours, I get to choose my days and my hours as long as I work 19.5 hours a week.

No extra workload is put on the staff as all the staff work different contractual hours and different days, I just getting slotted in where needed.

I love it, I work 2 or 3 days a week and no weekends, half term holidays I work 2 days so i'm home for the other 5 days. If I work Monday and Tuesday i'm not back in til the monday after, so I can take the children away for a few days. It fits in nicely with home life as DH works 5 days a week and we rely on very little child care.

It works if the business is large and there are lots of staff.

Small businesses suffer.

Did anyone see GMTV this morning on mums returning to work? Apparently it was something to do with Avon and it got me thinking about being an Avon Lady - does anyone know if its easy to do?

I have - ironically the hours I've asked to do are LESS flexible than everyone else as my problem is that my workplace is 24/7 and shifts can usually be slipped so that if you're on normal hours you could end up working almost anything. I needed fixed hours and set non-working days to fit around my husband's 9-5 work pattern. My employers have a great attitude to flexible working requests, though; anyone can ask, not just parents or carers, and they have to give a good business reason if they can't accommodate you. Plus even if they can't, they usually try and find a compromise, rather than outright refusal.

I do think the knee-jerk "oh my god, parents taking advantage of us poor hard working MCWMs again" reaction is a bit daft. You'd think they'd be appreciative of anything that kept us breeders off benefits and paying taxes!