Stay ahead of the curve with our exclusive Q&A series, brought to you by leading law firm, Arthur Cox, LLP, designed to answer your most pressing legal questions. These expert insights provide clear guidance to ensure your HR practices remain compliant and protect your organisation.  

This month's question:

Are Employers legally required to accommodate flexible working?

‘Flexible working’ means offering your employees alternative work patterns including, for example, flexi-time or permission to work from home.

Any employee (not an agency worker) who has been continuously employed for a minimum period of 26 weeks and has not made another application to work flexibly under statute during the past 12 months, has the statutory right to make a flexible working application.

An employer must consider any valid application made for flexible working and can only refuse a request for one or more of the following business reasons:

1. the burden of additional costs;
2. detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand;
3. inability to re-organise work among existing staff;
4. inability to recruit additional staff;
5. detrimental impact on quality;
6. detrimental impact on performance;
7. insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work; and
8. planned structural change;

An employer must hold a meeting with the employee to discuss their application within 28 days of the application made. Subsequently, an employer must give their employee notice of their decision within 14 days of the meeting of their decision on the application. If the employer refuses the flexible working request, they must provide a written notification stating the business ground(s) for refusing the application and explaining why the business ground(s) apply, details of the employees right to appeal and the date the employer is writing to the employee on.

However, whilst not yet implemented, employers should be mindful that the ‘Good Jobs’ Employment Rights Bill (Northern Ireland) has proposed changes to flexible working applications including the right to make a flexible working requests a day-one right and permitting employees to make two statutory flexible working requests per year (which would bring NI into line with GB).

This article was provided by Madison Bowyer, an Associate in the Employment Law Group at Arthur Cox NI. 

T:+44 28 9026 5886 
E: Madison.bowyer@arthurcox.com 
www.arthurcox.com

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