For the last decade flexible working has
been officially ‘family friendly’. In the UK we have had legislation that gave
the right to parents to request flexible working since 2003. That gave a clear
message that the reason for allowing someone to vary their work pattern was to
accommodate family commitments and this was reinforced in 2007 when the
legislation was extended to carers for adults as well.
This has led to the inevitable link between
flexible working and other benefits such as maternity leave, designed to
accommodate people who have children. Many organisations introduced policies
and procedures that simply complied with the law and allowed parents to ask to
vary their hours, or maybe do some work from home, but did not allow other
employees this opportunity. As a result, thousands of people are now
benefitting from a flexible working arrangement because their employer was
obliged to listen to their request. The vast majority of the proposals from employees
turned out to be reasonable and have proved to work well for both parties.
However, the world of work has moved on. Now
people who don’t have children are asking why they too can’t work flexibly.
They may want to avoid commuting every day and have a different work pattern.
They notice that their colleagues who are parents still manage to get their
work done effectively and that many of them say they are more productive. And
finally legislation has caught up with the realities of working life in the 21st
century. Now all employees have the right to request flexible working, so those
employers who were simply complying with the legal minimum have had to update
their policies.
For those organisations that already gave
and equal ‘right to request’ to all employees this may not be a dramatic
change. However they are still likely to get an increased number of
applications from non-parents as the idea of flexible working for all takes
over. For those employers who have so far treated this as a ‘family friendly’
policy there is a bigger shift involved. No longer does it make sense to
discriminate on the basis of the family situation. The reason that someone
wants to work flexibly becomes irrelevant and employers should not be putting
themselves in the position of judging the value of one employee’s personal life
versus another.
So finally, employers are being forced to
view flexible working as something other than family friendly. If they take the
time to look at the evidence they will find that it is actually ‘business
friendly’. There is now a wealth of evidence to show that giving people choice
over when and where to do their work, results in improved productivity. Those
organisations wanting to attract and retain the best talent (and who doesn’t?)
will recognise that saying ‘yes’ to requests makes business sense. And as we
move further away from the ‘family friendly’ era we will move closer to the day
when the idea of fixed working patterns becomes the exception and it is assumed
that all work arrangements are flexible as long as they meet the business
requirements.
