Changes to Flexible Working

The proposed changes to flexible working have now gone through Parliament and will become the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023.  Main changes are as follows :-

• Employees can make 2 requests in any 12 month period;
• Employers are required to respond to a requests within 2 months of receiving them;
• Employees will no longer have to explain the impact of granting their request and how it might be dealt with;
• Managers will not be able to refuse a request until they have consulted.

Employees right to request from day 1 (rather than 26 weeks) is not explicitly included but the Government has said it would deal with day 1 requests through secondary legislation in due course.

Comment

Those employers who already run flexible working procedures will need to review and amend the same.  The changes are not huge and most importantly an employer can still refuse a request on statutory business grounds.