Are Your Flexible Working Policies in Line with Legislation?

Are Your Flexible Working Policies in Line with Legislation?

In recent years, flexible working has started to become a normal part of office life. Historically, flexible working was most commonly utilised by mothers returning from maternity leave part-time – and they often felt themselves penalised in their promotion opportunities by a decision to reduce their hours.

Now, any employee can request flexible working, which may be for a multitude of different reasons, and employers are understanding that these individuals can offer as much value to the company as their full-time, office-hours colleagues. Statistics show that flexible working practices have increased by a massive 566% in seven years; from 8.7% of advertised roles in 2016, to the 58% of businesses currently offering flexible working options in 2023.[i] More than ever before, people are able to rise to the top of their careers while following flexible working patterns.

What is flexible working?

Flexible working is anything outside of the traditional 9-til-5 office hours. It could include working part time hours, term time only hours, job sharing, working from home or various combinations of the above.

Covid was a big catalyst in the increase of flexible working, with both employers and employees observing a number of advantages to working flexibly. It allows people with caring responsibilities, hobbies, or just wanting a healthy work-life balance to work hard and efficiently, while also remaining dedicated to responsibilities or priorities outside the workplace.

The Employee Relations (Flexible Working) Bill

The law legislating flexible working practices is somewhat outdated and was created well before flexible working became such a mainstream option for businesses and employees. A new bill is going through parliament to make the practice of accessing flexible working fairer and easier.

All employers, including those in the general insurance sector, need to ensure that their own policies comply with the new law.

The amendments are:

·??????For employees to be able to request flexible working from their first day in the job – rather than waiting for 26 weeks as per the old rules.

·??????Under the old legislation, employees were responsible for explaining how their new flexible working may impact the company. Under the new bill, employees will not need to make any explanation of why they want the flexible hours, or how this might affect the business.

·??????Employees were only able to make one application for flexible working per year. They will now be able to make two requests per year.

·??????Employers are still at liberty to refuse a request for flexible working, based on one of eight reasons, set out by law. However, they will now be required to have a discussion with the employee before rejecting a claim.

·??????The employer must respond to the request for flexible working within two months, rather than the three months they had under the previous legislation.

How will this affect your business?

These changes can have a positive impact on most businesses. Insurance companies are already offering flexible working possibilities, and so their HR policies will only require minor tweaks to be up to date with the new bill.

Offering flexible working options gives general insurance businesses the opportunity to hire from a larger pool of the brightest and best candidates. A strict 9-5, office base schedule for all staff limits applications from some people with caring responsibilities, disabilities, commuting constraints and a range of other barriers. Aside from the discriminatory nature of sidelining these candidates, eliminating these individuals from candidate lists vastly reduces the talent that a business can select from to fulfil a job role.

In an inflexible environment, employers may miss out on the person who is most skilled, qualified and experienced for the job, just because they need to work from home several days a week due to a travel issue or need to work condensed hours to be available for childcare once a week.

What to consider

Offering flexible working to employees does not mean that clients need to lose out. On the contrary, offering flexible working may increase your offering to clients; for example, the phone lines may stay open longer to clients if some staff are working condensed hours.

Some businesses have been concerned about cohesion as a company if people are in the office on different days, but there are plenty of ways around this – such as one day a week when everyone is required to be in the office, online meetings, or team away days.?

It’s also important to look at how new staff members can integrate and gain training and experience, so this is something for HR to carefully consider when they are looking at flexible working options for new staff. In some cases, perhaps a full-time induction in the office could be later followed by more flexible options.

Get ahead of the competition

If your policies are not already in line with the upcoming new legislation, consider updating it now. As well as ensuring that you are legal, moving quickly will allow to be ahead of your competitors, drawing talented insurance candidates to job roles before other businesses follow suit.

As specialist insurance recruitment agents, we at Aston Charles can ensure your job advertisements showcase the flexible working opportunities within your business.

Conforming with this new legislation involves some relatively minor changes, which should see an increase in employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention.

[i] Young, H. Startups. 2023. Flexible Working Bill: how to respond to a flexible working request. [ONLINE] Available at: https://startups.co.uk/people/management/flexible-working-bill/. [Accessed 3 July 2023].