British workers have got used to working remotely. Their employers still aren’t sure about it. Major companies, including Google and Lloyds Bank, have issued fresh threats to clamp down on staff who don’t come into the office. But supporters of flexible working have been given a leg up by Parliament in the form of a new piece of legislation that gives employees in England, Scotland, and Wales more power to request flexible work.
The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill received its Royal Assent on 20 July. It means that from spring 2025, employees will be able to make two flexible working requests in each 12-month period, and employers must respond to the request within two months. Separate legislation introduced alongside the bill will grant workers the right to request flexible working from the first day of a new job rather than the 26-week period of current frameworks.
Supporters of the bill say it’s a step forward to allow more people to move to more-flexible working arrangements. Some labor activists and analysts, however, say that a close reading of the legislation shows it’s full of holes, exposes workers to uncertainty, and still leaves them facing virtually the same rigid arrangements they do at the moment.
“The government decided against more radical proposals that would have brought about a significant legal shift, such as requiring all jobs to be flexible by default,” says Colin Leckey, a partner in the employment team at law firm Lewis Silkin. “Employers can still say no to flexible working requests on the same basis as before, although they’re encouraged to deal with them more quickly and efficiently and have a more positive attitude to them.”
For some organizations, the new legislation has been well received. “The bill strikes the right balance for us,” says Jane Gratton, head of people policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, which consulted on the bill as part of the government’s flexible working task force, alongside a range of government departments, business groups, trade unions, and charities. “It is encouraging better, earlier conversations around flexibility and earlier thinking about what's possible in terms of flexibility in the workforce, but at the same time enables a business, where this isn't possible, to put business needs at the forefront of, at the same time, thinking creatively around what could be possible.”
But its balance depends on which side of the track you stand. “Our biggest concern is with the day-one right to request,” says Alice Arkwright, policy officer in the Equality and Strategy Department at the Trades Union Congress, which also sits on the flexible working task force. “While it does increase the number of people who can make a flexible working request, there have been no changes to the business reasons employers can use to reject a request.”
Indeed, the eight statutory grounds for refusing a flexible working request, such as shouldering the burden of additional costs, having a detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand, and an inability to reorganize work among existing staff, will not change.
Currently, employers are rejecting flexible working, equipped with an opaque set of reasons, with little other explanation required. It’s already a widespread practice. Earlier this month, the TUC published data revealing that half of new fathers and partners who are eligible for paternity leave have their requests for flexible working denied by their employers, with those earning less than £40,000 ($51,700) even more likely to be rejected.
For workers who’ve been called back to the office unexpectedly—perhaps not what they were led to believe would be the case during the pandemic—the bill is useless. “They can submit a flexible working request asking to revert to remote working arrangements, and it will have to be dealt with more quickly (two months rather than three) and in a manner which involves less bureaucracy (no requirement for the employee to spell out the effect the request will have on the employer),” says Leckey. “But ultimately the employer will still be able to say no to it on the same basis it can at present.” The right to request, then, is simply the right to be rejected.
Perhaps the most significant change is the requirement for employers to consult with employees before rejecting a flexible working request. So in theory, companies should explore alternative options and frameworks in which they could accommodate the requested flexibility (such as switching hours on certain working days rather than every day of the week), before declining it entirely.
With flexible working still an ongoing discussion in the workplace, it’s often shrouded in hesitancy and apprehension. Many workers simply never ask for it, due to fears of negative treatment, rejection or the assumption that they’re lazy, or not hard-working enough. According to research published earlier this year by coaching service Careering Into Motherhood, 38 percent of working mothers had not asked for any flexible work, with 46 percent believing that asking for it impacts future opportunities for promotion. Even with the fresh legislation, it’s tricky knowing when is the safest time to ask—in the interview process, when a candidate risks being deprioritized due to their flexible working needs, or on the first day, when a worker is very much still within a probationary period.
What’s more, evidence suggests that even with a day-one right to request, not everyone would feel comfortable taking up the opportunity. A recent study by Timewise, a flexible working consultancy, found that while nearly half of UK workers would like to take advantage of the new rights to flexible working from day one, 21 percent of UK workers wouldn’t request flexible working from day one, while 30 percent were unsure whether they would. Studies find that the majority of workers want more flexibility as to when they work, with many willing to take a pay cut to do so.
But wholesale change for the UK feels a long way off. In the meantime, a basic duty that forces hiring managers to outline flexible jobs upfront should be the next target for any further legislation, according to campaigning groups like the TUC, the Fawcett Society, and the Women’s Budget Group. Despite a more welcoming attitude toward flexible working during the pandemic, only 30 percent of jobs are advertised with any kind of flexibility (up from 26 percent last year), according to the social enterprise Timewise. In the IT industry specifically, this figure sits at 32 percent.
“Flexible working is essential for many people, and it means the difference between being able to do a job or not,” says Arkwight. “We want employers to be required to include possible flexible working options in job adverts, with the successful candidate having the right to take that up when they start in post.” This would guarantee greater transparency on whether it’s possible to do the job, alongside any responsibilities outside of work, before a worker accepts a role.
As demonstrated by the clamor to get back to the office, progress doesn’t happen in a straight line, and employees are constantly having to battle to maintain benefits and rights. Having an even more robust legal framework would force the hands of the higher-ups and encourage businesses to reprioritize flexible working, which is especially important in larger organizations. In the tech industry, 65 percent of large organizations (with 25,000+ employees) enforce a structured hybrid model, setting expectations on when employees work from the office. It’s the smaller companies, with 500 employees or less, that tend to be more flexible already—88 percent are fully flexible with no rules or parameters on whether their employees come into an office or not, according to research published last month. In a similar vein, 67 percent of companies under 100 employees are fully remote.
More generally, the proportion of organizations taking steps to increase the provision of flexible working over the next six to 12 months has fallen 6 percent since 2022, according to the CIPD. Now only 16 percent plan to expand their offering beyond home/hybrid working, with just under a third (28 percent) saying it’s not a business priority given the challenges they’re facing. As Gratton points out, there are over a million job vacancies in the UK—with firms crying out for people with the skills needed to fill those positions. “Having a flexible workforce makes good business sense, and there’s strong evidence that it helps both employee and employer,” she says. With flexible work now an unavoidable part of the tech landscape, let’s hope employers see broadening access to it as a force multiplier, and their ticket to a more resilient future, rather than a tick-box option that can be skirted around, as this bill enables.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
