That’s all that Her Majesty said about employment law in the Queen’s Speech. At least we can be relieved that this is all that she said. And we can take some comfort that the Number 10 website says that the government wants to take time to consult fully with business and families, to identify the best way to extend flexible working.
The Government argues that flexible working is good for business: it enables employers to draw on a wider pool of skills and talents in the workforce, improve recruitment and retention rates, and increase staff morale and productivity. The member survey we conducted last year (Scanning the Horizon, EEF/CPH Consulting Survey 2009) suggests however that 30 per cent of our members are yet to be convinced it brings any benefits at all.
Our survey also showed, however, that only 12 per cent of respondents would refuse to consider a request for flexible working from workers who did not have the statutory right to make the request. Most companies (78%) considered requests no matter who asked.
This fits in with Government evidence that, irrespective of the right to request flexible working, for the majority of employees the opportunity to work flexibly is available (Work and Families Act 2006 Evaluation Report). That does make you wonder why a Government committed to ending the “deluge of regulations that has been choking off enterprise for too long” wants to introduce more rules on flexible working.
The evidence is clear, as the Work and Families Report says, that “flexible working is now generally widespread with many employers offering some forms of flexible working and most employees having some form available to them.” Surely, without compelling evidence of market failure, there is no need for more regulation.
In EEF’s survey, 45% of companies said they had no problems with flexible working but that, of course, suggests 55% do. Because of that, we produced a toolkit to help companies manage requests for flexible working effectively which we hope will reduce that number when we next survey our members.
Are you one of the 55% of companies that struggle with flexible working? Let us know the problems you face and the solutions you've found.
With the Equality Act 2010 looming, our next blog post will look at the Equality Act and equal pay.