September 17, 2018
Legislation giving employees the right to request flexible working has failed to increase take-up, new research from the University of Manchester shows. The research, presented at the British Sociological Association conference in Belfast last week, has found that there has been no significant overall increase in the number of employees working flexibly since the legislation came into effect in 2014.
September 14, 2018
Employers considering new flexible working options for their employees are concerned about the security and management implications, according to a recent poll, despite the fact that staff now have the legal right to request flexible arrangements. The survey of medium sized businesses, carried out for RSM by YouGov, found that over the next five years, three quarters of respondents were considering introducing flexible terms of employment, allowing workers to work outside 9 to 5 or increasing the use of remote working.
August 20, 2018
Most organisations already offer some sort of flexible working and over half of employees now ask to work flexibly, a new survey from XpertHR research has claimed. One in 12 organisations (8.1 percent) reported that all employees worked flexibly, with employers attributing the rise to a more supportive workplace culture and the impact of recent legal changes. The survey found that more than half (55.9 percent) had seen an increase in flexible working requests over the past two years. Three out of four believed that this was due to changes in workplace culture in recent years, attributable in part to a change in the law in 2014 that extended the right to request flexible working to all employees with at least 26 weeks’ service. Flexible working goes across the board, and includes part-time working, variable start and finish times, home-working and other options.
May 21, 2018
The UK’s Work and Pensions Committee has published a report detailing recommendations on how working carers can be better supported by both employers and the government. This includes proposals to make the right to request flexible working available from an employee’s first day. The report, Employment support for carers: thirteenth report of session 2017-19, seeks to offer advice on how working carers can be better supported to remain in or enter employment. The report covers recommendations for the existing state benefits system around the carers’ allowance, potential changes to employment policies and also how the government can act as a model employer in this space.
March 30, 2018
The CIPD has been invited to co-chair the UK Government’s new Flexible Working Task Force. The task force has been established by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy to promote wider understanding and implementation of inclusive flexible work and working practices, bringing together policy-makers, employer groups, Unions and employee representative groups, research groups and professional bodies. More →
March 20, 2018
The Government’s Women and Equalities Committee has published its report on fathers in the workplace. Its main conclusion is that current policies supporting fathers in the workplace do not deliver what they promise, despite good intentions and this is particularly the case for less well-off fathers. It claims that the Government must reform workplace policies to ensure they meet the needs of the 21st century family and to better support working dads in caring for their children, say MPs. The report concludes that the right to request flexible working has not created the necessary cultural change and the Government itself admitted to the inquiry that its flagship shared parental leave scheme will not meet its objective for most fathers.
February 12, 2018
A new government campaigned launched today encourages more parents to take up the offer of Shared Parental Leave in their child’s first year. The workplace right for eligible parents allows them to share up to 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of pay after having a baby. They can take time off separately or they can be at home together for up to 6 months. Around 285,000 couples every year are eligible but take up could be as low as 2 percent, according to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and around half of the general public are unaware that the option exists for parents.
January 19, 2018
The UK’s working parents are struggling to cope with the strain of overwork – and deliberately stalling and downshifting their careers to reverse the negative impact it is having on family life, according to a new study. The 2018 Modern Families Index, published today by work life charity Working Families and Bright Horizons, reveals the stress of the modern workplace is pushing parents to breaking point, creating a ‘parenthood penalty’. According to the study, many parents are obliged to work far over their contracted hours due to increasingly intense workloads or because they feel it is expected of them.
August 15, 2017
All jobs should be advertised as available for flexible working, and greater support should be given to fathers to play more of a role in child care, in a shake-up of culture and working practices to reduce pay gaps, the Equality and Human Rights Commission said today. The call comes as the Commission’s strategy for tackling gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps is released. A strategy to reduce pay gaps in Britain makes six recommendations outlining the action needed by government, in society and in our businesses to improve equality in earnings for women, ethnic minorities and disabled people. According to the EHRC, offering all jobs as flexible will remove the barriers faced by women and disabled people, who are more likely to have to negotiate flexible working or accept part-time jobs that are often low-paid. Creating work places with flexible cultures will increase opportunities for everyone, giving people greater choice about the role they play both at work and home. More →
July 12, 2017
Yesterday, the much-awaited Taylor Review into modern working practices was finally published. And by modern working practices, the report focussed primarily on what has become known as the gig economy. People have been speculating about the contents of the report for months and things ramped up last week after a partial leak to the media. So, things were already bubbling under nicely before the actual publication of the document brought things to a boil yesterday. Assuming the government do more than kick the whole thing into the long grass, always a possibility, debate will continue for a while. We’ll let politicians do their thing with it, but here are a few of the initial reactions from interested parties and the experts. More →
June 12, 2017
Any residual feelings of certainty that anybody in the UK may have had about the country’s future following last year’s Brexit vote, will have had them pretty much eradicated by last Thursday’s General Election result. However, we must try to make sense of things for society and the wider economy as well as specific facets of it, such as the world of work. The whole thing looks like the pig’s ear that it is, of course. Fortunately, as some experts have already argued, there are some reasons to see some positive outcomes, including a soft (or softer) Brexit and the chance of a more positive approach to workplace rights, now that the Government needs to maintain a broader consensus. The fear or hope that the UK would lighten its already soft touch approach to workplace legislation would seem at least to be less well founded.
December 12, 2017
A 300 year old idea explains some of the enduring appeal of the open plan
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design
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