Flexible working request

[coachmylife]

This is a slightly odd one, but I'm out of my depth and googling hasn't helped.

I'm on the board of a charity. We fairly recently had a situation in which a staff member left as a result of not being allowed to work as flexibly as she wished. She didn't take a case against us, but wrote the board a long and distressed letter in which she alleged that flexible working requests aren't dealt with according to clear criteria, and the result is that women with caring responsibilities are disproportionately affected. This has been robustly rebuffed by management and the chair, but I'm not fully convinced their arguments are right.

We now have another flexible working request, from someone (M) returning from maternity leave who would like to work 2-3 days a week instead of full time. We are a small organisation w a tight budget, so we can't create a new role for her - this would involve re-shaping things.

During her mat leave, her deputy (J) has been acting up on a full time basis. This has gone really well.

Management want to turn down M's request because they say that relationships will be complicated if M is in charge 2 days and J 3 days (which is probably what would have to happen if there was a job share). I suspect this is right, particularly if the split is that the former deputy (J) is doing more days, and is deputy on the days M is in charge.

There is no obvious 'spare' role that either person could do for the extra days (ie that either the returner could do, or the acting-up person could do instead of being deputy on the returner's days at work).

I am very bothered by the arguments being made, but I can't put my finger on exactly what is wrong, and what I should be saying. At root, I think that management really like J and want to keep her, and aren't so bothered about M. If M leaves as a result of this, J will take her job permanently.

I think my questions are:

1. If the result of a policy is that women with caring responsibilities are disproportionately affected by that policy, even if that policy is in the best interests of the charity's users, is that policy still discriminatory/ unreasonable?

1. Is it reasonable to refuse M's flexible working request because of the impact it would have on J (also a mother of young children, btw) who was acting up on a fixed term basis during M's maternity leave?

No way is it a good idea for J to be in charge 3 days a week and M 2 days

What will J do on the other days? Unless J also wants to reduce days then how would this work?

The days M is in what will J do.

Ultimately a flex work agreement needs to be in intrest of buisness and service users. If the roles just are not there then that is that

On the days M was in charge, J would be her deputy. I agree that J being in charge 3 days and deputy 2 days would be really messy.

The organisation employs about 20 people, and although this is a specialised part, people do move about within it. Does the organisation have to TRY to make M's request work, eg by asking if anyone would like to do a job-share w her? There are other job shares in the organisation, and the job partners do shift fairly frequently.

I suspect that there is someone who would be happy to job-share w M, and that we would be able to recruit a part-time person to take up the fraction of their other job that would then be vacant.

But this would leave J back in her deputy role (full-time, to two different job-share bosses).

Ultimately, I think that if management REALLY valued M, they would find a way to allow her to stay, by moving other bits of the jigsaw around. But they want J, and saying no to M's request makes it more likely that J will stay...

It's unusual these days for a management role of 3 days a week to be approved and as you say there are many reasons why a job share wouldn't work unless the maternity cover has expressed an interest in working a reduced number of days.
Would lady returning from mat leave consider 4 days a week and would that be acceptable to the organisation? That could be a good compromise to propose in this situation, then at least you've demonstrated some flexibility.

www.gov.uk/flexible-working
www.acas.org.uk/responding-to-a-flexible-working-request

There a only a few reasons that a flexible working request can be refused legally. You also need to consider that the person returning from maternity leave is entitled to a job at a similar level as their previous role if they're role is no longer available. You cannot refuse the request based on another employee as the expectation should always be that the original person will return to their job role.

If your policies are shown to disproportionately affect one sex negatively, it can be used as a case of aex/maternity discrimination regardless of the intention of the policy.

I can see why the board don't feel positive about it. I think job share is tricky to get right. I know this won't be a popular opinion but experience of teachers doing job share is rarely a positive one from both parent's and child's perspective, I'm sure it's great for the teacher though - they rarely know what has been discussed with their job share, or even have any desire to get involved - not my problem - is often the tone of the response.
I do know of one couple of senior managers - they work 3 days a week each and work together on a Wednesday when they are both in the office...they work really hard at making it work, are on top of each other's work and they never use the excuse that they don't know what the other has done or decided.
Could M find someone to recommend that she could job share with and make it work - it's risky though.

Can’t J just act up two days a week still and continue in her original role for the remaining part of her week.

An alternative is that j goes back to her job and you advertise for a job share for m.

It sounds like your plane of work isn’t family friendly

Job shares are positive from work situation with strong coverage of the workload and staff who have the life balance they need

The problem is that no matter how good J is, M has the right to return to her role. I agree with pp J acting up for 2 days and doing her role 3 days is an option as is advertising for a job share.

Flexible working is here to stay and will become the new norm.

I can’t see any way for J to be both manager and deputy at the same time. J would need to have one role, which would be either manager or deputy.

I’d say the company would have to advertise for a job share for the days M doesn’t work and J would be free to apply (however if they need full-time hours that would be unlikely).

Thanks people.

You've summarised it all really nicely:

• concerns that users will suffer if the job is job-shared
• the fact that it isn't going to work for J to be both manager and deputy at the same time
• the fact that we aren't family-friendly
• that the fact that it is a particular group that experience problems disproportionately does mean that there's indirect discrimination going on.

Aaargh. I need to pursue this, don't I. I can't let this go.