Default right to flexible working. Take a balanced approach.

A Whitehall source said: ‘We are looking at introducing a default right to flexible working. That would cover things like reasonable requests by parents to start late so they can drop their kids at childcare.

‘But in the case of office workers in particular it would also cover working from home – that would be the default right unless the employer could show good reason why someone should not.’

 

I am going to be totally honest here, I work from home. I have enjoyed working from home and feel I have been productive in doing so. That said it has come with challenges, a feeling of being split off from the team, isolation and Zoom fatigue after endless video calls. Going into the office is a bit of a novelty and something I now really enjoy on the occasion that I go in.

So why do I think that the latest rumours from Whitehall are a bad idea? Hypocritical much?

I grew up in a big family. I am one of 4 children, my Dad worked abroad for several weeks at a time and my Mum was responsible for the school run, running the house, getting us all to after school activities and everything else that we might need.

When I say school run, we were in 3 different schools set over 20 miles apart, and we didn’t live near a school bus stop. This meant leaving the house shortly after 7am to drop my sister and I at a train station (from where we would change trains, catch a second train, walk to a bus stop, catch a bus through central Manchester and then walk half a mile or so to school).

My Mum in the meantime would dash in the opposite direction to drop one brother off at a bus stop, and then another direction for my younger brother. The process repeating in reverse in the evening.

That was not all, I played in orchestra and wind band, the hockey team, lacrosse team and occasionally subbed for the netball team. I also played sports outside of school. I played two different instruments, one taught in school and one outside of school. My sister also took up music, as well as my younger brother, my older brother being into sports.

That meant different finishing times and weekends that didn’t look wholly dissimilar to the weekdays in terms of tearing around all over Lancashire and Greater Manchester to get us to where we needed to be. At some point during all this, my Mum also recompleted her exams to qualify as a Chartered Accountant (after spending several years at home with all of us) and took on a role working with a local authority.

So, what’s goal here you might be thinking? Pity party for my Mum? Showing off that I was one of those who enjoyed school?

My point actually comes round to the default right to flexible working.  I can remember various hissy fits at not being able to go to a certain social event or catching the relief on my Mum’s face when I wasn’t selected at trials for another sports team. I remember being annoyed that Dad couldn’t make every match, ‘even when he was home’, not appreciating at the time that he was crossing several time zones numerous times a week and the jet lag was likely crippling. Not to mention the fact there were another 3 siblings at home vying for attention.

The myth has run for so long, we can have what we want in life if we work hard enough/are organised enough/work for the right employer/have the right partner…….

The hard message is, we can’t, not always. My parents were always going to have to disappoint one of us. It was inevitable one of us would not get what we wanted. The family resources (money, time and simple availability) could never have stretched to it. The reality was compromise was required from each of us to keep the cogs on the family wheel turning.

If we had all demanded to do what we wanted, when we wanted, the system would have imploded. This is why the rumours from Whitehall concern me. ‘We are looking at a default right to flexible working…….in the case of office workers in particular it would also cover working from home- that would be the default right unless the employer could show good reason why someone should not’.

The current regime allows those who have been working for their employer for 26 weeks and have not made an application in the previous 12 months to request. An employer must consider seriously the request, it isn’t an automatic right to have the flexible working request granted. Employers can refuse for valid business reasons.

So currently if there would be a burden of additional costs, inability to meet customer demand or re organise work, there would be a detrimental affect on quality or performance or perhaps there would be an adverse impact on the team, the business can refuse.

What concerns me about the default right being considered is how wholly unmanageable for employers this is likely to be. It shifts the employer straight onto the back foot. Will ‘good reason’ be that all staff are wanting to work from home? Loss of team atmosphere? Administrative challenges with completing projects? More often than not the employer’s ‘good reason’ won’t seem like a good reason for the employee as its likely to be something that doesn’t directly affect them.

By providing the right as a default, my worry is that it will rip the heart and soul out of many businesses, it pushes the focus onto the needs of each individual employee and the risk that the needs of the business will be watered down. Remembering of course that if the needs of the business are watered down and business is affected it can lead to restructure and/or redundancy.

Of course, the needs of employees need to be a central focus for employers, they are the people getting out there are driving your business, but when you have 100 employees all pulling one employer in different directions, with little interest in compromise (which often happens when someone is provided with a default right to flexible working), the business cogs can start to breakdown.

Working from home does not work for everyone. It is a fact; it works for some and not others. Some are more productive than others, some have more distractions, some do not have suitable working space.

An employee may request to work ‘flexibly’ 3pm-10pm so that they can deal with school run/childcare and balance their family life, but what if all your customers clock off at 5? Surely this is a valid ‘good reason’, however when an employee experiences a default right to flexible working being taken away from them, even via the best engagement and communication in the HR world, it can still often lead to endless appeals, grievances, and relationship breakdown.

I learned growing up, I can’t always have my own way and that demanding something as a ‘right’ didn’t get me very far. I was raised to think of others, compromise, and work as a team. I work from home whilst it works for the business, and the business shows me flexibility to the extent that it doesn’t negatively affect others in the team to ensure I can have a work life balance.

As a family another mother/driver/pair of hands wasn’t financially an option, we could not physically have functioned giving everyone exactly what they wanted without considering the needs of the family as a whole. No one was neglected or entirely went without, but no one got what they wanted all the time. The needs were balanced and the family wheel continued to turn.

Surely that is the key? Unfortunately, too often we see flexible working requests where the requester has absolutely no regard for the negative affect that their request might have on their team mates or the business, the entire focus being on their own needs, exclusively. My concern if the new regime comes to fruition is that it encourages that attitude, rather than a more balanced approach.

 

Elissa Thursfield