Reducing hours at work

[WorkHours]

I hope to reduce my working hours. Colleagues have had their recent requests refused - the director has apparently introduced a new policy - staff work 5 days or 2.5 days to make it easier to recruit job shares.

Staff already working different hours remain unaffected.

We are unable to see any new policy on the HR website. Am waiting for HR to respond to my query.

This is a large organisation. Would each request not need to be considered on individual merit to take into consideration flexible retirement, parenting/caring responsibilities and health?

Pretty sure the only thing the company has to consider is the effect of the request on the business.

If they have decided that they will not grant requests outside of 2.5 hours as it makes recruiting a job share difficult, then that's a valid business reason.

Aren’t females more likely to have caring responsibilities so likely to be disproportionally affected by a blanket policy?

”Would each request not need to be considered on individual merit...”

Yes.

”...to take into consideration flexible retirement, parenting/caring responsibilities and health?“

No.

Each request should be considered individually but the reasons the individual is making the request are completely irrelevant, unless they are requesting it as a reasonable adjustment for a disability. Requests should be considered in terms of whether there is a detrimental effect on the business and how/whether the request could be met.

We only use business criteria - all requests for part time or reduced hours are refused as it doesn’t work for the company.

I work for a huge household name, my management was hugely supportive of my request to reduce to 24 hours, but I think it suited them too, my current role had come to an end, my new role wasn’t full time and it stopped them having to find something else for me to do part of the week.

Saying that I have worked in a different office part time before and they supported that but I had to go into a call centre type role to do it as ultimately flexible working has to work around the needs of the business.

How would your proposed reduced hours work? Would someone else have to work twice as hard for your reduced week?