Flexi work request confusion

[BurritoTamer]

Will try to stick to just the salient points

Had a flexi agreement since mid 2024 for full time compressed hours and 40% office, 60% home hybrid split

I made a new flexi request in early Feb to go part time, and including the 40% office, 60% home split. So same hybrid pattern, different hours (less hours each day, so proportionally the same as before)

After a very lengthy process, I received a letter that said (in summary)
”I agree to the hours on a trial basis and the hybrid pattern will be decided at my discretion as required”

I pushed back on this requesting clarity, essentially, I need this to be formal. For me a formal denial is better than wishy washy.

Manager has come back and said:
“The flexible working is based around a pattern of working hours that you have requested.
The hybrid pattern should be based around working from home/office. Policy is 60% office, 40% home. Your current proposal does not match, can this be adjusted please? Hybrid working is an informal and flexible agreement and can be changed at short notice.

I would not be willing to accept a formal approval to hybrid working that does not match group or the teams requirements that is currently in place. I also previously asked teams with hybrid/flexible working to adjust them inline with the latest requirements, which currently is not being complied with”

Is he correct? I thought the whole point of flexible working requests was seeking variation from the “norm” or the policy?

if I have to change my request to fit into policy, what is the point of it as a process?

Can anyone please advise? HR are on the thread and are quiet so I’m assuming he’s right?

But still, I’ve provided the evidence that statutory request =/= automatically equal contractual change.

I agree that OP can absolutely argue the 2024 change was permanent. It does change the position that that was a clear term.

I doubt you could now argue that this more recent request was pregnancy/maternity related though.

I don’t think OP has confirmed whether the 60/40 currently words on number of days or hours.

It is permanent change, unless otherwise stated. Unless there is trial period or the request specifically states it is for a certain period, approval generally leads to changes in terms and conditions and this is where may businesses and employees get caught unprepared.

As one of my previous posts says, statutory requests are not easy to reverse and so some make the mistake of thinking they can shift between full-time and part time.

As to the pregnancy and maternity it depends on timings but might come in scope. Generally, I would anticipate them having issues with the change of hours rather than the hybrid pattern. The line manager sounds like a liability and from what the poster said is using the process to just force an agreement

Not necessarily - it depends on the reason given. If it changes the actual days of the week you are in the office, and these were agreed before - they can refuse to let you work from home on these days. So it comes down to wording. Is it 40/60 a week, or on average in a month; is it 2 days a week or is it specific days like Monday and Friday. All of these matter. It is not that simple.

You also need to be sure you want part time hours as they can totally refuse having you back full-time (unless the change is temporary). Call working families for free legal afvice

I agree they cannot unilaterally change her current contract of Full time compressed 60% at home. However, it’s the op who wants to change her contract and reduce her hours but keep 60% at home and they can say no.

Offering a compromise of part time but 60% in the office/ same number of hours as now in the office is not an unreasonable position.

I agree the business reasons the op has provided appear to be weak but as I said without much more info and the contract wording etc. I would be cautious saying there aren’t any to justify the employers offer.

@cucumber4745 you are spot on about being absolutely sure about reducing/increasing hours. I have had employees caught out by that and be left unable to increase hours when they really needed to.

Thanks, I had not heard of working families!

The original FWR specifies days at home and days in the office. Mon/Wed/Fri at home and Tues/Thurs office. This is the same in my new FWR

I've never had an employee think they can unilaterally decide to increase their hours back up! How odd, but shows how clear wording needs to be

Yes thanks for flagging to both you and @cucumber4745 , I was actually aware of this from the last FWR that I couldn’t change back on a whim then either if I didn’t like doing that pattern.

Another thing that may or may not be relevant is that my manager had not mentioned this as being an issue once until I queried the formal letter. In our hearing, he’s on the transcript noting that my wfh are Mon/Wed/Fri and he doesn’t raise this as an issue.

So either he didn’t think about that at the time and he’s just realised he can’t/wont approve now, or it was tactical to long out the process by only throwing this out now? Why not raise it in our meeting?

@BurritoTamerin the meeting they should have questioned all aspects of the request and how it would work practically to ensure no detriment to the business etc. and challenged you then on how any reduction in office time could be mitigated/ how flexible you could be on that.

It does sound like he's thought about it more after the fact, but you should be able to appeal the decision and put in writing why you're appealing. Apologies if you've already said but what legal reason did they give to decline that element?

It is probably mistake on his end, but if that is in the meeting notes or you have a witness it may work in your favour.

You might need a new meeting to agree exact work patterns and negotiate. I am not clear on the change in hours if your office attendance has stayed the same in terms of days. They can still request you to go Tuesday and Thursday as per your contract. If the issue is that they need you there full days, but due to the change in the hours you will be there half days, could you do full days but reduce your overall days? Or do you need 5 days but shorter? In the later case, then you can question how is the extra day in the office going to benefit the business? Can they show that your current arrangement has negative impact? In general, I think if you have specific days included in the contract it is harder for them to argue otherwise. This is why you need to speak to a lawyer and a union if you are a member.

His latest email still doesn’t provide a business reason. He is saying that flexible working (for the hours) and hybrid working (for the location) are two separate things and are therefore being dealt with separately.

“To confirm I accept the changes to flexible working however I am unable to approve a Hybrid working that does not achieving the 60% in the office at this time.”

I am trying to make it clear that in my opinion the two elements form the whole request. Acas did say that they can approve one element and not another in principle. For example, if he had done the reverse and accepted the location but rejected the hours with a business reason - I would not have made a thread here as that would be cut and dry.

Instead no matter what I say he seems convinced that “hybrid” is totally separate and he is sort of refusing to actually formally reject it.

I don’t know what to say to force the issue or if I even have the energy. He’s very difficult to “manage up” and I’m thinking this is going to further affect our relationship even if I did get legal help. I have to be realistic. It might be better to leave on good terms than upsetting the apple cart, my industry is quite “everyone knows everyone”

Thanks, the first meeting was super chaotic where he was just throwing random hour suggestions at me and I just had to refute them one by one. HR were there taking notes but didn’t say much other than that one of his requests wasn’t acceptable to the company.

Then they asked me to leave the room, then asked me back 10 mins later and said they’d accept the hours on a trial basis. Then I get the formal letter about a week later and it essentially says “hours yes, home/office split to be agreed with manager”

I still haven’t actually had a proper refusal. So I’m not sure where I stand on appeal. They seem to be just waiting me out to sign the original doc without actually giving me a business reason to refuse the location element. They just want to leave that “tbc” so that makes it harder to appeal?

Tbc is my nightmare outcome frankly! As this whole process has shown, never rely on goodwill

OP, you posted about leaving if you needed to. Are you confident you'd get another job quickly in your industry? If so, I would be applying ASAP and then taking the route of negotiating new hours with a rival job offer in hand, which traditionally helps a lot. My sector is not bursting with jobs atm but yours may be different. IANAL.

I think I could but I think my current PT package offer would be significantly better than anything I can get externally right now. So it’ll be a shame but I’m cutting my hours so already taking a pay cut. Appreciate the thought though, market is very tough and that does affect my negotiating power yeah.

I would email HR to clarify that your hybrid was previously formally approved and as per email dated xyz now forms part of your terms and conditions. Then state that you are seeking variation to hours NOT the hybrid agreement as your understanding is that you are contracted to be in the office on X and Y days.

Then ask them to clarify their position on why are they varying your days in the office and if they can actually change your terms unilaterally. Leave the manager out. If you include some links from ACAS of something in email from legal will strengthen your argument.

If you are open to the 60% in the office then don’t bother. I am not sure about the exact number of hours you are doing as depending on that the 60% on part-time basis may be very close to the 50% on full time basis. In that case you can keep the manager happy and agree.

Thank you, really appreciate.

I’m not really open to 60% office days, I really could do the whole thing 100% remote (and did for 2 solid years at this company during covid) but I always felt like 2 days was a fair compromise in my specific role. Hence getting it formalised in 2024. If I were to accept another office day, it would not be Monday (I’d prefer Fri), which at the moment he’s insisting upon and that’s definitely not guidance either.

This was all meant to be in place for Tuesday but here we still are having a back and forth, it’s so draining.

Keep us updated. It is probably no use to you now but from 2027 any refusal will need to show it was reasonable.