Can employers take away work from home days that's in your contract

[Mamaalwaysworried]

I work full time 5 days a week. 2 days at from home, and in my contract.

I requested to take 1 day off and work only 4 days and keep my contracted 2 working from home days.

Employer said I can only go 4 days if I give up 1 working from home day.

Is this legal? Can they take away my working from home day even though it's in my contract?

There's a 14 days to appeal process, which I've gone slightly beyond, but I don't think they'd reject an appeal because I'm late

I wouldn't bet on that.

I commented first upthread, I'm CIPD qualified. Your employer has acted reasonably from the information you've given us.

Op

You said you work full time so I assumed 7.5 hours a day pretty much.

So my point was, how is that arranged (you referred to child care as well) - maybe they need 9to5 at least three days a week? Can you do that from home? (Eg nursery 8 to 6)

Nothing illegal, they aren't taking away your working from home, they are just saying if you want to drop a day then it can't be one of the office ones. Seems very fair as they could have likely found reasons to decline the drop in days.

”Is there no legal support for mothers who simply cannot take care of their kids with certain working arrangements?”

How are you taking care of them now? Why can’t the same childcare you currently use when at the office continue as before? If for some reason it can’t, are there really no alternatives?

what's your company's policy? at my work we have to be in the office for 2.5 days a week. so your proposed work pattern would be declined.

Well the obvious answer flowery is that wfh takes away commuting time. That for me personally means a reduction of 2 hours from my working day.

But I think they probably can do this op unfortunately. Business reason is fairly woolly and they can always twist it if they so wish.

Your thread title is very misleading. They certainly can't "take them away" by eg saying you have to work in the office every day now.

Of course they can turn down your request to reduce your ratio of office time:WFH time from 60% to 50% whilst losing one of your 3 office days. That does not work for them.

You have missed the deadline for appeal? And you dont think it matters?

flowery - On my office days I have to leave my house before 7am and DH drops the kids off at 8:00. On WFH days I don’t have to leave the house until 8am to drop the kids off. However since DH has changed jobs, he isn’t as flexible and therefore cannot do the drop offs anymore for more than 2 days a week. This is why I wanted to drop a day all together, and do the drop offs the other two days. My mum collects them after school but she also cannot do more than 2 days.

So really I have no other option and cannot afford to pay someone to do the extra day.

You may have already looked at it but Citizens Advice have a good guide on line on how to pitch your argument. I'm not sure where you stand having missed the Appeal deadline though. You may have to show good reason for the delay and even then I'm not sure it would be enough

So you need one extra hour of childcare then? For the one day a week your DH will no longer be able to drop off?

Could you change your flexible working request just to change the hours of your 3rd day in the office so that you go in later? To enable you to drop the kids off on that day as your DH can only do 2 days now? Just a thought

”Could you change your flexible working request just to change the hours of your 3rd day in the office so that you go in later? To enable you to drop the kids off on that day as your DH can only do 2 days now?”

I agree, I imagine that would be a lot harder for your employer to justify refusing.

What are your working hours? On the days you work from home, who keeps the kids to you finish (unless you finish at 2.30pm)?

If your children are in childcare could you split one of your office days in two - so 2 days at home, one full day in the office and then 2 half days in the office. I used to do something similar when my son first started school and it worked well.

Hi there, I am a lawyer. Legally speaking because you're changing the terms of your contract from working full time to part time, they are allowed to revisit the existing terms. In other words, yes, they can argue that in the new arrangement, you would be working 1 day from home only.