The Bill seeks to build on the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act passed in April 2024 by the previous government. This extended provisions around applying for flexible working arrangements and included secondary legislation to make these a ‘day one’ request right for all employees.
Post-pandemic flexible working Different approaches
Our organisational case studies on flexible working looked at flexible working practices in 5 large organisations in different industries in the post-pandemic environment:
retail
local government
financial services
healthcare
banking
This included both statutory
We found that flexible working has become a key part of organisations’ strategic thinking! with recognised argentina phone number library around recruitment! retention! and workforce well-being. During and since the pandemic! flexible working has been crucial in making hybrid working successful. to offer value to working parents.
The research found that flexible working operates in various ways in organisations. One of these is via the statutory requests cover by legislation. This is currently one of the less common approaches to accessing flexible working. Organisations intentionally manage flexible working in both formal and informal ways to reflect a spectrum of workforce needs. These range from foreseeable working patterns around fixed childcare to ad hoc needs to varying working hours to attend non-work appointments.
In most instances! our research found that the big change of recent years! hybrid working! was organised home smart speakers and mobile phones with managers. While there has tended to be organisational steer on the ratio of site to home presence that staff were expected to be working! these patterns of working were rarely reflected in people’s written contracts. This was partly because they were seen to be fluctuating or evolv.
Some of the operational issues that large organisations were engaging with be numbers flexible working included:
keeping track of employees’ different! often complex! working patterns
ensuring equity in access to flexible working
Measures here included offering a broader range of flexible working options to site-based workers unable to work in a hybrid way! and trialling recording systems.