THE WOMEN IN BUSINESS TOOLKIT: Flexible Working
THE WOMEN IN BUSINESS TOOLKIT All of the Chapters so the Women in Business Toolkit can be found online on the Women in Business Toolkit section of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Website along with an online version of this document. Click the links below or see www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit for more information.
Having a family and caring for dependents
Promoting Best Practice Mentoring and Sponsorship
Maternity Leave and Pay
Unconscious Bias Training
Paternity Leave and Pay
Transparency in Pay and Promotions
Adoption Leave and Pay Shared Parental Leave and Pay The Right to Request Flexible Working
Promoting Diversity Through Recruitment Flexible Working
Statutory Parental Leave
Diversity Policies and Strategies
Your Rights in the Workplace
Making the Case
Discrimination, Informal and Formal Grievances and The Equality Act (2010)
Making the Case: How to Construct a Business Case and Useful Statistics
Taking a Case to Employment Tribunal
INTRODUCTION: This handy little guide offers you some concise and, we hope, highly practical and useful information on Flexible Working. If you like the sound of Flexible Working check out the „Making the Case‟ chapter of the Women in Business Toolkit for lots of helpful advice and statistics to help you make the case to your employer. For more information click on the link on the left-hand page or go to the Women in Business Section of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce website: www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit.
Connecting you to opportunity... This guide, brought to you by the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, is part of the Women in Business Toolkit. This toolkit aims to help inform and empower women and encourage best practice in businesses, helping make the UK a forward thinking, attractive place to work. Whilst useful and informative, it does not aim to provide encyclopaedic knowledge or in-depth legal advice about the topics in question, merely an introductory account. If you have any questions about any of the topics covered in this document please do speak to your HR department/the member of staff responsible for this area or seek professional advice. The Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce features some of the UK‟s oldest and largest Chambers. It has nearly 3,000 member companies that employ over 200,000 plus affiliate organisations representing 15,000 people. It offers extensive services to industry and commerce, having served the interests of business for nearly three centuries, promoting trade locally, nationally and internationally.
Of employers offer at least one form of flexible working...
offer three or more
92% of employers offer part-time opportunities...
...52% offer flexitime
...26% offer some
...52% offer job
...24% offer compressed
employees term-time working
sharing in some roles
working hours in some roles
Around the world...
of employees worldwide would prefer a job with less pay and more flexibility over a higher paying job with less flexibility
WHAT IS FLEXIBLE WORKING? Flexible working involves altering your usual working hours. Many people request flexible working to fit around family commitments, such as dropping off and collecting children from school or nursery or to help care for elderly or disabled relatives. Others use it to help improve their work-life balance, to study for a qualification or take on charity or volunteer work. There are numerous different kinds of flexible working:
Job Sharing: Dividing the hours of one job between two people.
Part time: Working fewer hours.
Compressed hours: Working full-time hours but over fewer days.
Flexitime: Working certain “core hours” (e.g. 10am-4pm) but being able to alter when to start and end the working day.
Annualised Hours: Working a certain number of hours each year with some flexibility on days and times worked
Staggered Hours: Differing start, finish and break times to other employees.
Working from home: Working remotely in your home or a location other than your normal place of work.
Phased retirement: Now that the default retirement age has been removed, older workers can decide when they want to retire and ask to reduce their hours and work part-time.
If you have worked for your employer continuously for more than 26 weeks you also have the statutory right to request flexible working. Click here or see the Women in Business Toolkit section of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce website: www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit for more information.
HOW CAN I ASK FOR IT? Many employers offer some form of flexible working. They do not have to offer it, is still a best practice activity rather than a legal requirement. However, as of the 30th June 2014, all employers are legally required to consider requests for flexible working in a reasonable manner (Click Here for more information). To begin, have a chat with your line manager or the relevant member of staff about wanting to work flexibly. There may already be flexible working policies in place that you were not aware of or other employees who have set a good precedent by altering their work patterns in a similar way. If your employer needs some convincing you may want to offer to put together a business case for why they should consider offering flexible working. A business case is a formal, written document designed to encourage a decision maker to take a particular course of action. Some key things to include in your business case are:
The kind of flexible working you want to take (job share/parttime etc, hours), why and when you would like to start.
A description of how your switching to flexible working might affect the business and what could be done to help the transition (e.g. switching to job share: needing to recruit a new member of staff, part time working: being unavailable on certain days and unable to cover as much work).
You may also want to back up your request with brief case studies and statistics.
For more information on how to write a business case and some useful statistics, key lines of argument and case studies you can include please click here or see the ‘Making the Case‟ Chapter of the Women in Business Toolkit on the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce website www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit.
CASE STUDY: Flexible Working
Name: Dr. H. E. Ewart Job Role at time: Director of Public Health Organisation at time: Rugby PCT Company Size: 100-250 employees Type of Flexible Working: Job Share Current Employer: Solutions for Public Health
The role of the Director of Excellence guidance, Public Health was to provide communicable disease control, senior strategic leadership chronic disease management and and management of the assessment of health care public health input to the PCT technologies to support healthcare and partner organisations, commissioning. including the Flexible working was local authority. „I would not have been a 50:50 job share This included able to undertake a with a colleague. the strategic role at this level on a We had known each development of other as friends full time basis” public health through our programmes children‟s school and decided to including health promotion, apply for this post as a pair when substance misuse, we saw it advertised. My skills vaccination and and experience were slanted immunization, screening towards healthcare aspects of programmes, implementation public health whereas my of National Institute of Clinical colleague had a stronger
background in health promotion and the wider determinants of health. We argued that by employing us, the PCT would get a DPH with senior experience across all domains of public health – something that would be very rare to find in one individual. We must have convinced them as we got the job. My job-share partner and I worked a 50:50 split time wise, so our employer had one whole time equivalent in post. This worked reasonably but could have been better with some overlap to improve hand over between us each week. This could have been by each of us working 0.6 whole time equivalent hours, although this would have meant the employer funding 1.2 whole time equivalent hours rather than 1. It was possible to manage the work reasonably comfortably within the contracted time and this made work/life balance easier. One of our reasons for applying for a Director post
as a job share was that we hoped we could co-mentor each other so that we could each expand our expertise into the otherâ€&#x;s key areas of competence. In practice, pressure of work and deadlines meant that we tended to keep to our own existing areas of expertise. Apart from the lack of time to comentor/develop each other, the job worked out extremely well and we had very positive feedback not only from within our own organization but also from others outside. The job came to an end when the NHS was restructured and the PCT disbanded. By this stage our children were older and we both moved on to full-time roles with other organisations. My experience of job-share working at director level was entirely positive. I would not have been able to undertake a role at this level on a full-time basis at the time and it was not a role suitable for part-time working. My experience of working at this level made me a strong candidate for the consultancy role I subsequently applied for and was appointed to.
CASE STUDY: Freelancing
Name: Karen McElroy Type of Flexible Working: Freelancing Job Role: Founder Company: FCM Associates
Looking after a young family was important to us. As my and working is hard work. husband‟s job involves a lot of The desire to be a good travelling we decided I would take mother and an employee will on the day to day parenting role. often push professional Whilst my employer had been women into new ways of supportive offering flexible working working. Some negotiate hours, I found it was increasingly flexible working contracts; difficult to develop my others take a “Freelancing is a career in a part-time career break growing trend so we role. I‟d always but I chose to wanted to set up my become a are excited about what own business so took freelancer to advantage of a the future brings” work flexibly Business Start Up around my course and created a long term family. business plan for a freelance PR In 2005, with both of our business. This process really children reaching school age, enabled me to define my financial my husband and I decided it and personal objectives for the was time to change our work future. life balance. Having one Registering FCM Associates as a parent on-hand to do the limited company and appointing an school run and be around accountant were important during the school holidays milestones to make this new
venture „real‟. Nervously I headed into a brave new world!
What followed helped shape the business as it is today.
Over the next three years I worked from home undertaking interim contracts, helping with one off projects and collaborating with other practitioners. I worked during school hours and in the evenings and networked with other small businesses which was a great source of support.
To support me with this new client, Tracey Chadwick joined the FCM team who had become a parent the year before and also wanted to work from home whilst balancing child care. We delivered a successful campaign and won two industry awards in the process, including the prestigious Freelancer of the Year.
The journey hasn‟t come without challenges. The 2008 financial crash led to many marketing teams reducing budgets for PR which led to a very quiet year however I was very glad to have kept reserves in the bank to continue to pay my monthly wages.
We moved into our own premises in 2011 and we remain here today. Eight years down the line, my family is growing up and FCM is participating in the Growth Accelerator programme to grow the business. Our aim is to bring together more PR and Communications professionals who wish to work flexibly.
The next big break for FCM came in 2010 when I met a new contact at a networking dinner. This led to FCM successfully pitching to promote the UK‟s biggest waterways festival.
According to the Professional Contractors Group freelancing is a growing trend so we are excited for what the future brings.
About FCM Associates Ltd.: FCM Associates is an independent PR agency based in the Midlands offering award winning public relations and communication support on a freelance basis. Our flexible approach means clients can pick and choose to use our services according to their business needs - without a fixed retainer fee. To find out more visit www.fcm-associates.co.uk.
CASE STUDY: Offering Flexible Working
Name: Rick Grain Job Role: Managing Director Organisation: Effigy Blinds Company Size: SME Flexible Working Policy: Offers Flexitime
We had one case where a rather than 8am everyday up to male worker with a young our normal finish time of 4pm family and working wife except Mondays when he would wanted to vary his working finish at 12pm. This allowed him hours. His wife‟s employer time to get home to pick up their was being very inflexible in youngest from nursery. their approach He explained that „‟We always try to to her working they could leave him hours, giving accommodate requests in the nursery until her unsociable for variance” later but this would hours and incur additional hours that did charges which would mean that not allow her to care for their his wife would have no advantage youngest child after nursery in continuing to work and they on Mondays. would then have to rely on benefit My employee approached me payments rather than paying their with the following proposal: own way. He would work from 7am
I agreed to his proposal,
re-arranging the work pattern (with their agreement of course) of another part-time employee to cover Monday afternoons. There were some very minor teething problems with this arrangement; I became aware that the employee was spending far too much of the first hour posting on Facebook. But after a word or two about his responsibility and the faith we were placing in his good will and integrity he recognised his error and became much more effective and productive. Health and safety wise, there are only a few machines and
activities (e.g. using saws on the shop floor) where accidents and unforeseen breakages could result in serious injury . As a result employees are not allowed to use these machines when alone on the shop floor. In the short times where varying hours mean an employee would be in the premises alone there are almost always other tasks they can be doing in the time. As a result, unless there is a very good reason why we absolutely cannot make changes to allow our staff to be flexible over hours worked we always try to accommodate requests for variance which are usually single instances and fairly rare.�
About Effigy Blinds: As a manufacturing company making window blinds we try to respond to customer’s needs as far as possible including making blinds on the same day if we have stock available. Our staff are highly skilled and experienced and also versatile as we strive to add new products to our range to better serve our customers. Go to: www.effigyblinds.co.uk for more information
CASE STUDY: Offering Flexible Working
Organisation: Wragge & Co. Policy: Offers all staff the opportunity to request flexible working Company size: 1000+
Wragge & Co is an reasons why they want to work international law firm, flexibly when assessing whether providing a full service to an application can be accepted. clients worldwide. We have Our focus is simply on whether it around 1000 employees, a will be workable for the team and mixture of legal and support client needs. staff, most of „‟our focus is simply on We are currently whom are partnering with whether it will be based at our Working Families, a headquarters in workable for the team charity that helps Birmingham. and client needs” working parents and Our bespoke carers achieve workworking policy life balance. Our aim is to work has been open to all since with the charity to establish our 2008, and this is reflected in first job share at Senior Associate the fact that 30% of our level. One of our four Group employees either work part Leaders (Head of Legal Practice) time or flexibly. We don‟t ask already works 4 days a week. our employees to explain the
Wragge & Co celebrates the diversity of its people - different backgrounds; different cultures; different experiences; different interests; different ages; different needs. We want to create a workplace where our people can be themselves, celebrating the fact
that we're all individuals. We are committed to attracting and retaining talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds. Our dedication to supporting staff in this area is one of the reasons weâ€&#x;ve been voted one of the top 50 workplaces in the UK for thirteen years running.
About Wragge & Co.: Wragge & Co is a UK-headquartered international law firm providing a full service to clients worldwide. Working with in-house lawyers, company directors, investors, developers, HR professionals, pension trustees and entrepreneurs, our experts help deal with day-to-day issues and complex, strategic matters. We offer a partner-led service backed up by the strength and support of more than 1,000 people, each delivering first-class legal advice. This is why our people are trusted advisers to multi-national businesses, financial institutions and government departments. Go to www.wragge.com for more information.
JARGON BUSTER: ANNUALISED HOURS: Working a certain number of hours each year with some flexibility on days and times worked. COMPRESSED HOURS: Working full-time hours but over fewer days. FLEXIBLE WORKING: An employment practice that gives employees a certain degree of flexibility over their working hours. FLEXITTIME: Working certain “core hours” (e.g. 10am-4pm) but being able to alter when to start and end the working day. JOB SHARING: Dividing the hours of one job between two people. PART TIME: Working fewer hours. PHASED RETIREMENT: Now that the default retirement age has been removed, older workers can decide when they want to retire and ask to reduce their hours and work part-time. STAGGERED HOURS: Differing start, finish and break times to other employees. STATUTORY RIGHT TO REQUEST FLEXIBLE WORKING: The right held by employees with caring responsibilities or an adult or child to request a move to a flexible working pattern, and have that request considered by their employer.
USEFUL LINKS: The UK Government’s Website: https://www.gov.uk/flexible-working/overview The flexible working section of the UK government‟s website provides more useful, introductory information on flexible working and signposting for further information. The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) Website: http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1283 This particular link will direct you to the ACAS Advisory Booklet on „Flexible Working and Work Life Balance‟. This booklet contains more in-depth information for employers including advice on drawing up a flexible working policy. The Agile Future Forum Website: www.agilefutureforum.co.uk The Agile Future Forum is a business led initiative, featuring some of the UK‟s largest employers such as Tesco, BT and John Lewis. It aims to raise awareness of and share information on workforce agility practices, primarily focusing on flexible working. The information on the findings section of this website may be particularly useful when encouraging your employer to offer flexible working. The Equality and Human Rights Commission Website (EHRC): http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/workingbetter/a-managers-guide-to-flexible-working/ This link will take you to the EHRC „Managers‟ Guide to Flexible Working‟ website. It contains in-depth advice on delivering flexible working and employer case studies This is another document that it may be useful to direct your employer to.
SOURCE OF STATISTICS
Of employers offer at least one form of flexible working...
92% of employers offer
...offer three or more
part-time opportunities...
...52% offer flexitime
...26% offer some
...52% offer job
...24% offer compressed
employees term-time working
sharing in some roles
working hours in some roles
CBI (2011) Navigating Choppy Waters: Employment Trends Survey
Around the world... of employees worldwide would take prefer a job with less pay and more flexibility over a higher paying job with less flexibility Cisco Systems(2010) Connected Technology World Report
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