Compressed hours after maternity leave?

[wibblyjelly]

I'm due back to work in the summer. I wanted to do compressed hours (full time hours over 3 or 4 days) but work have declined it. I'm now going back 9-5 4 days a week. If a nursery place becomes available, I will go back 5 days, Mon to Fri.
A friend has said that legally, work have to come up with an alternative arrangement to fit better in with my needs under family friendly terms and conditions. Is this right?

No. They have an obligation to consider a flexible working request, and there are only certain reasons why they can decline it (though its not that hard to do so) and there is no law that requires them to accommodate your family requirements I'm afraid. What reason did they give for declining? Is is something you can address, eg by suggesting a trial period ?

There's a waiting list, which is fair enough.

Not sure I understand. Waiting list for what?

To go into compressed hours. Sorry for not being clear'

Do you mean that they feel that they can only take X people out of a department/in a role/ etc at the same time?

There is no inherent reason there should be a quota as such, and therefore a waiting list. However, some roles/departments may be such that they can support a certain number of people working compressed hours, but not more.

I think its probably reasonable (unfortunately) for the business - is it a client / customer facing business? I'm assuming 9-5 are the company's core hours and they need cover within those hours, Monday to Friday. If everyone is trying to do say a 40 hour week over 3 or 4 days (you'd have to be doing more than 13 hours a day to do it over a 3 day week?!!) then they'd have lots of people covering say 7-9am and 5-8pm that they didn't actually need, and less people covering the core hours Mon - Fri of 9-5. You can understand therefore why they can say there is a quota for people working compressed hours. If your request doesn't fit with "business needs" they are well within their rights to decline your request.

Thanks all, I thought that was the case, just wanted to double check what my friend was saying, before I went in and embarrassed myself!

Your employer can refuse your request by claiming that they are unable to reorganise work amongst the existing staff. This would be a valid reason for refusing your request. Your best chance of success would be to persuade the employer to agree to the request.
There is NO right to work flexibly.

i worked full-time before i went on maternity and during my back to work interview i told them i wanted to work part-time (full days, 3 days a week). they were happy to let me do this provided they could find someone to work the other 2 days as mine was a full-time role, which thankfully they did!!

for you to return to work on reduced hours, an employer cannot dismiss the request for no good reason, they have to take reasonable steps to accomodate you. If however they do all they can to allow reduced hours to be feasible but its still not possible, then they can rightfully decline your request.

xx