How to maximise the chances of flexible working being agreed?

[Sassles]

Hi All,

I am hoping to benefit from your experiences. I am about to put in a flexible working request to my employer on return from mat leave. I have typed up a request below and would greatly appreciate any comments on it and what else I should add to increase the chances of this being agreeable to my employer. I would for a large muti-national company, however, the team I work in is very small with only 6 people doing the role for the whole of Scotland.

I am concerned that they will just say "no, the team is too small to accommodate any days off", but if this is the case, it prob doesn't matter what I write!

"I would also like to officially request flexible working in order to accommodate childcare responsibilities.

I woud like to request a change to my working pattern and contracted hours as follows:

25.5 hours a week condensed over three days. These hours would be taken Monday to Wednesday, beginning work at 7.45am till 4.45pm with a 30 min lunch break.

The days are selected to accommodate the childcare I have managed to arrange for a Monday to Wednesday.

I have selected these hours to maximise the amount time at work, whilst accommodating for train times in order to be back home in time to collect my child from the carer.

The condensed hours are preferable to normal 9am to 5pm hours as I will be able to manage a larger workload than I would in 3 normal working days and this would minimise the impact of my flexible working on the team and the business. I will also get through a greater amount of work in the 3.75 hours I would be working prior to 9am, than the same amount of time in a normal 9 to 5 day, as this is a quiet period of time with minimal disruption from phone calls, therefore minimising the impact of the days that I will not be working on the team and the business.

On occasion my partner will be able to pick my child up from the carer, should there be a priority reason for me to stay on at work.

I am aware that in our business that we have peaks and troughs in volumes of work throughout the year, but can help accommodate this by taking work home if required and on occasion working outwith these hours or weekends if necessary. Although I will be responsible for my child on my days out of work, in times of high demand I would be available on the phone or to help with some work from home.

Working part time will improve my work life balance which will increase my morale and motivation to get the job done and my commitment to the company. It has been proven that the productivity of part time workers is greater per hour than that of full time workers. I can also arrange to have any dentist/doctor's appointments in my days off."

Any glaring omissions or general comments?

Much appreciated.

TBH, it's too much about you and your childcare, and not enough about how this will benefit/not adversley effect the company.

You need to focus on the fact you will be covering the core hours (although slightly shifted) on the days you are in, that 3 contiguous days will enable continuity etc.

What are your current hours? Are you full time currently?

If so, are you proposing to get the same amount of work done in 25.5 hours as you would in 37 or whatever your full time hours are? The only thing you say to address this is that you will be more productive early in the morning. Does that really cover the shortfall? If you are proposing changes to your responsibilities/tasks either in how they are carried out, or indeed whether they are carried out, you should state that. It's not clear how you think your existing job can be done.

flowery It's slightly complicated by the fact that I am going back to a new role. I was 37 hours in a team that had two roles. I'd being doing one role for 3 yrs and interviewed for the other role and was successful at the start of my mat leave. They have recently made the other role I was in redundant. I am therefore going into a new role when I was previously full time in another role. I would not be covering the same amount of work (although I imagine that will prob be what ends up happening) over reduced hours as would be done full time.

As I haven't done the role, I'm not really sure what to say about the work allocation. At the moment each person is responsible for a number of customers. I would imagine that I would get less as I was doing less hours (although some customers have more work to be done than others) and the remainder would be spread within the group. They change the way they do things all the time and sort of work as a unit in times of peak volumes. E.g. if I had 5 customers wanting something at the same time and another agent had 1, he would take some work from me. I would guess that if something urgent happened with one of my customers on a day I wasn't in the office another agent would pick this up.

I officially started the role on 1st July, but have been on mat leave and they did not get any cover for the role and managed the workload between existing staff. So, I know they could manage without me for 11.5 hours, but I'm a bit wary about saying this and making myself redundant!

We have an on-line template to fill in for flexible working requests, have you checked with your HR department in case they have something similar? It lets you know exactly what they are looking for.
Iirc, ours asked questions like "What impact do you think your change in hours will have on your team?" and "How do you think this can best be managed?"
It's difficult when you're going back to a completely new job though.
If you are happy to work from home, and this is something your company does, then i would highlight this as an example of your flexibility rather than discussing your childcare and your partner's role.
Hope this helps

i just had my application approved. In it i included that i would be willing to trial the new arrangements for 3 months with no commitment to a change in contract by either party. I'm sure this did help and hopefully over the 3 months i should be able to show them that my proposals will work.

What I have found helpful is discussing flexible working with my manager first to identify any potential issues and to gauge their support. I always promote it from the side of how my flexible hours can benefit the company. I also mention - if given sufficient notice - I could be flexible and come in if required and ask for a trial period. I find then the request is much more likely to be approved as I have already discussed it with my Manager, and the Manager is the one who (IMHO) gives the green light to HR.

stayclassy We don't have a template, but I did get hold of one from another company that will help a bit.

It's a good idea to discuss having a trial of the hours to see if it works.

squashysponge I did try to have an informal chat about it with my manager, but he wanted to do everything by the book. i.e. put in formal request in writing.

Thanks for all your help. I'll go type it up now, but will try a last attempt at an informal discussion before I submit it.

Sassles

Take out all mention of your childcare needs, this is of no relevance to your employer. Google a template which includes all the legally required information and think of ways that your changes benefit the busines, i.e reduced staffing costs. Include that with sufficient notice you are willing to be flexible as much as possible.

I agree with what has already been said, offer a 3 month trial period. I did all this with my employer and produced charts demonstrating the costs of me going back full time compared with the saving made by me dropping a day. My employers have agreed to it. But the most important thing to remember is you need to show how it will NOT be detremental to the business, as legally in order for them to say no they must explain why it would be detremental.

I hope you get what you want

Your employer can turn down your request on any of the following 8 business reasons so you need to ensure your application explains how the following don't apply in your case:

?Burden of additional costs
?Detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand
?Inability to reorganise work among existing staff
?Inability to recruit additional staff
?Detrimental impact on quality
?Detrimental impact on performance
?Insufficiency of work during the periods you propose to work
?Planned structural changes.

I took out the childcare bits and added in some costings etc. I didn't offer the 3 month trial as I would rather they just said yes, but will keep that for the meeting as a compromise if they are unsure.

misletoad Great advice thanks. The ones that will apply to me are the middle ones and I tried to cover off these issues.

Fingers crossed!

Hi,

Update to this thread.

I had meeting last week with Boss and it went well. Very positive.

Today, Boss got in touch and they have agreed to my full proposal. I am soooo releived and thankful.

They are going to trial it for six months with it being reviewed monthly. I'm quite happy with this though as I am new to the roll so think a 3 month trial would not accurately reflect my input etc and a monthly review will give me warning of what more ai nay need to do to make it work. It also gives me the chance to make sure the finances are what I thought and the early mornings may just be too early, so at the end of the 6 months I could change this to more or less (depending on how it's going).

Thank you for all the advice. Clearly it helped!!

Hi Sassles,

Can I ask how long it took to get a repsonse to your letter? I sent an email at the beginning of the week but no response as yet.. Thanks!

Legally they have 28 days from your formal written request to hold a meeting to review it. Although they don't need to hold a meeting if the answer is a straight yes!

Once you have had the meeting, they then have 14 days to confirm the decision to you in writing. You then have the right of appeal.

My cousin is now engaged to an employment offer and she gave me some documentation on the procedures. Here are some interesting bits -

The request is just that; there is no entitlement to have it granted. But the employer may only refuse it if he considers that one or more of a number of specified grounds applies: See post above

Given the breadth of the permissible grounds, and the absence of any requirement that refusal must be shown to be objectively justified, there is manifestly considerable scope for the request not succeeding, albeit that in practice the incidence of outright refusals is relatively low;
Employers will not be able to simply tick a box saying one or more grounds exist but will have to provide sufficient explanation to the employee of why, in their opinion, the ground applies to their business and why it results in the refusal of the application.

HTH