Anxious and need advise please!!

[JessKanji]

I'm due back at work in Sept08. I'm going to meet my boss and HR Manger. My issues are as follows: I work in a hotel, and it's shift work! It's FrontOffice so the hours are either 7am-3pm or 3pm-11pm. I've been looking at childcare/nurseries and the hours are generally 8am-6pm! Help how can I convince my employee I need stable hours. I can request flexi hours but they have the right to say no, right? What can I do if they refuse the flexibility

Jess requesting stable hours is a perfectly legitimate flexible working request. So you could request to (for example) always have the same shift, or something.

But they do have the right to say no if there is a business reason why it's too difficult for them to manage. If the hours for all staff doing your job are 7-3 or 3-11 it might be tricky though.

Are you hoping to be able to do 8-6? I have to say I think that's unlikely, if the arrangement is that everyone does 7-3 or 3-11 it sounds as though it would involve a lot of disruption and changing everyone's hours to accommodate you and they would be within their rights to refuse.

Requesting the same shift for continuity and stability to enable you to sort consistent childcare out might well be fine and is worth asking for. Asking for a complete reorganisation of the way shifts work and disruption to every other member of staff doing that job is unlikely to be fine I'm afraid.

if they refuse you can appeal the decision, but if it's a legitimate business reason for refusal you are unlikely to get them to change it.

Are there alternative jobs you could apply for internally with more family friendly hours perhaps?

Here about flexible working and here's the process you must follow.

Jess just to add, if your employer refuses your request, they must give one of the following 8 reasons and explain how that reason applies in their case.

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 periods the employee proposes to work
Planned structural changes

Depending on what you ask and what the situation is at your work, you can see that one or more of those reasons might well apply in your case.