Flexible working request declined - Advice on appealing?

[noseymcposey]

I am due to return to work in June and applied to return to work either doing 3 or 4 days a week. I received a letter today to say that they don't agree to either.

Is there anyone I can speak, or anywhere I can look for advice on appealing their decision?

On what basis did they refuse your request? Do you feel that your request could have been accommodated?

Do you know what the reasons were? Did you give reasons in your application why they should let you do 3 or 4 days a week?

It's frustrating but unless the business can see a tangible benefit to letting you work less hours, they can refuse the request. So you need to sit down and work through what benefit they will get from your request.

The request has been declined for two reasons:

1. Detrimental impact on the ability to meet customer demand.

The job is picking up queries and resolving them within a certain time frame. They have cited our SLA which is to turnaround 75% of queries in 24 hours and said that being out of the office for a day each week means I wouldn't be able to achieve this.

However, for as long as I have worked on that team (since 2012) we have never even got close to that. The vast majority taking over a week (off the top of my head)

1. Detrimental impact on qaulity and performance/inability to reorganise work among existing staff.

Essentially they have said there is a massive backlog of work in the team and they are currently failing to turn work around fast enough, therefore other members of the team do not have capacity to follow up my work in my absence.

I previously worked in this role doing 4 days a week and had nothing but positive feedback at the time. There is an element of managing your workload to minimise the impact of being out of the office for a day each week. (at the time of going on mat leave I had gone back up to 5 days a week). However, the team has since taken on other tasks so it is true that there is a much higher workload.

Having said that, since taking on the additional tasks they did let someone who worked 4 days a week move into the team. After a while he 'retired' (was made redundant but the official line is that he retired.)

I think there are several precedents to working 4 days a week in this role. Secondly, I also think that they still won't meet their SLA's even with me working 5 days a week as they actually need another 2 people to cover the workload but aren't able to hire anyone else at the moment.

Where could I take it from here? Grateful for any advice!

Thurlow I thought it was more that they had to try and accomodate where possible rather than only agree if it was beneficial to them?

How can an employee working fewer hours be argued to be beneficial to the team?

They have to be able to accommodate. Reasons given for declining seem pretty legitimate.

Why did you go from 4 to 5 days?

You have to show how the work can be managed. If you asked for fewer hours you might find you're successful since they could then get someone in to job share with you. They can hardly get a job share in for one day a week.

I originally applied for 3 days and then we discussed 4 days in the meeting, both were rejected.

I went back up to 5 days because I needed the extra money.

It's too late to propose something different now. You don't think that there are good precedents for doing this role 4 days a week that weakens their reasons for rejection?

Appreciate your replies, thank you. Can I ask if you are responding from a layman's point of view or a professional point of view?

Can anyone recommend an organisational where I could seek advice based on my specific circumstances?

They have to consider the request, which it looks like they have, and they've given you business reasons why it can't be accommodated.

How is work allocated? Can it be done by job sharing? Was that suggested as an option?

Did you have a meeting to discuss the request and explore alternative options?

Work is allocated by picking up tasks from a joint mailbox. You are then responsible for completing your tasks. Job sharing was covered with 'I don't think we could get someone to work 2 days'

I did meet with them- my original proposal to work 3 days was pretty much dismissed (fair enough, I can see why it could be problematic) but my proposal to work 4 days a week was actually discussed in positive terms. One of the sticking points was that I wanted my non-working day to be a Friday (childminder doesn't work Fridays anymore) and an employee on a different team that my manager is responsible for is already off that day and he didn't want two people off on a Friday. That isn't addressed in the letter but options of working 3 and 4 days are both rejected outright.

The fact that your team is missing many of its targets and that the workload is too high anyway are not good enough reasons for you to appeal. If they are not allowed to recruit further staff, having you drop a day is only going to mean more work for everyone else and an even worse record on meeting the targets. They quite reasonably don't have to agree to that.

Could I argue that having someone working 4 days a week with 10 years experience at the company would potentially be more benefical than someone completely new working 5 days a week? There is only 1 other experienced member of the team (2 newer members) plus me.

I understand what you are saying unexpected, but they allowed someone who only worked 4 days a week to move into the team from another area only a few months ago? (and subsequently got rid of him) Doesn't that weaken their argument at all?

Unfortunately, although they are legally obliged to consider your request, they are not legally obliged to agree to it.

In my opinion, "flexible working" is just lip service and often is of no benefit if an employer says no. Nice idea and all, but in real life, employers can just say no and that's that for another year until you can ask again.

Could it not be done as a job share? That would have no impact on the work as such...

I agree MissBattleAxe - I would still like to appeal though if nothing else but register my dissatisfaction and I don't see I have anything to lose by doing so?

I think it's too late to suggest a jobshare now RandomMess?

One of the reasons for appeal is if the facts are incorrect in the rejection. They have quoted our SLA's at me so I want to check that they have them correct. I think they are in my job description, could I ask HR to send me a copy of it?

I should also say that they have 10 years really good service out of me and they are, as a company, anti-family and anti-women. I know for a fact I was passed over for a job I wanted as I was considered a maternity risk. (they were right as it happens, but the man they got to do it instead left anyway so they gained nothing..) It's an old school boys club and my feeling is that they don't want me to go back now I have two children. Or they think I'll go back and leave and they want me to hand my notice in. They know, from the conversations we have had up until now that it would be a struggle for me to work 4 days and that I'm not inclined to want to work 5 days a week. It's absolutely the norm for women who have children to work 4 days a week in the department across all the different teams so I really think they are being unecessarily awkward.

One more thing! They say they've taken on more work but not expanded the team, but actually there is one more person than there traditionally has been as they are keeping my maternity cover on?

I kind of feel that the reason there is a backlog is because there are 2 fairly new members to the team. It's really easy to measure the amount of work that comes in and what is picked up because everything is logged. I think I could possibly present a case based on these numbers but obviously I've got no access as I'm on maternity leave. Would it be unreasonable of me to ask for them, I feel it would be! Without knowing the actual numbers coming in and who is doing what it's really difficult to argue what impact I would have.

I'm an employment lawyer.

You can only make one application a pear but your employer might allow you to change the request if you asked. Could you do 2.5 days to allow a job share?

year

Thanks prepper - the trouble with 2.5 days is that it's City based the impact of travel costs is such that it's not really worth working less than 3 days a week (for me or the other person). There is no harm in asking though.

If they decline to consider the option of jobshare, do you think there is any basis for appeal (particularly with regards to the fact that I've worked succesfully in this role doing 4 days a week in the past.)

Also, if we can't agree anything, which looks probably, I would be open to the idea of redundancy. Is there an appropriate way of conveying that?

What incentive would the company have to offer you redundancy? There is a position available, you have applied for flexible working which has been rejected, it is up to decide to return to your previous job or not. Why would the company make you redundant, costing money, when they just have to wait for you to either return or resign?

Maybe if they think that now I have two children I won't be that committed to the job and they would rather have someone childless.

Or if they think I will return for a short period and then hand in my notice and they would rather just move on with finding a replacement now?

None that are obvious, but it still happens!

Your role is the opposite of redundant unfortunately. They need someone to do the job. You are contracted to work full time. If you don't wish to work full time and they cannot accommodate your flexible working request for valid reasons then your options are to continue full time or to resign (in which case you don't qualify for a redundancy payment.)

The only reasons they can give for refusing your initial request are as follows:

The 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.

It does sound like they're saying they are relying on a combination of 1-6.

They've actually hung it on 2 and 3.

So that's it then basically. They could have agreed to it and have before for exactly the same person in the same job, but it's tough shit.