flex time2

The pros and cons of flexible working hours…
By Nick James
December 15, 2008
Flexible working hours can be a real bonus, or a bit of a headache, depending on whether you are an employee or an employer.
At the moment parents of children under six years of age and parents of disabled children under eighteen, as well as carers of adults, have the right to request flexible working hours from their employer.
In April 2009 the government is set to provide legislation to extend this right of request to all parents of children under sixteen years of age.
I must stress that this legislation will only relate to the employee’s right to request flexible working hours, not the right to demand it.
So it might seem easy to dismiss any such change as rather meaningless in practice. After all, employers will have the
right to refuse such requests should they consider them to be detrimental to their business.
Yet my main concern is that such changes will bring with them more statutory(法定的）procedures for employers to follow and could also result in unforeseen problems.
Any request for flexible working hours will be covered by procedures similar to those already relating to redundancy （冗余）.
Stringent（严格的） timescales will be enforced covering meetings, decision processes and appeals thereby creating further paperwork for small businesses to cope with.
If due process is not followed an employee could make a tribunal （法庭的） claim against their employer and if the reason for the employer’s refusal is considered to be discriminatory, this could lead the way to a full discrimination claim being made against the company.
No good employer is against their staff working flexible hours if the business does not suffer through it.
Indeed, part-time, term-time only, job sharing schemes and non-standard start and finishing times are already implemented all over the UK and are working successfully.
Happy staff make for a well motivated workforce and flexible working has been found to improve morale and productivity, reduce absence rates, enable a higher staff retention（保留）rate and improve recruitment.
No-one would dismiss a legitimate flexi-time request from an employee who wanted a better work/life balance, but for small businesses it could prove almost impossible to meet all such requests satisfactorily.
Seeming to favour one member of staff over another could quite easily result in animosity (敌意), and within a small workforce this would be a dangerous development.
We must also give some thought to members of staff who do not have children or dependants（受养人） and who may regularly be expected to cover for（支付） employees who do.
They may begin to feel victimised（受骗） and they are indeed completely overlooked by the gov ernment’s proposal to extend the right to request flexi-time. This surely must be unfair.
The TUC（=Trade Union Congress职工大会） wants all employees to be covered by this proposed legislation but this would result in a very negative impact on countless small businesses. Many would find it almost impossible to meet everyone’s specific flexi-time requests and the volume of increased paperwork that would result would be unsustainable. Employers want to hold on to their valued employees and to provide them with a happy environment in which to work. Therefore, they should continue to do what successful employers have always done; maintain a close relationship with their staff and try to support them with as much flexibility as it is possible to allow, within the constraints of good business practice.
It takes a lot of effort for small businesses to create enough wealth to keep and pay their staff in this economic climate, so I hope that the government will reconsider its plans to burden us with yet more legislation in April.。