How I Requested Flexible Working: A Case Study

Julie Highland, 32, was so determined that her request for flexible working would be accepted that she put in a considerable amount of time into her application.

Entitled to Apply for Flexible Working

Since April 2009, all employees with children under 16 are entitled to request flexible working and, although their employers need to be able to show that they have given the application due consideration, they have no legal right to accept it. Prior to April 2009, only parents or guardians of children under 6 or disabled children under 18 were entitled to apply. Flexible working applicants must be full-time permanent employees (not agency or freelance staff) and have worked for the company for at least 26 weeks before their application.

Julie was careful to research all the legal details of applying for flexible working, as well as trying to understand all the ‘unwritten’ rules. She explained, “As I was applying for flexible working before April 2009, I was entitled to apply because my daughter was still only two and a half. I had really enjoyed my maternity leave and thought that I was ready to go back to work full time, but I was finding full-time work increasingly hard to juggle with childcare arrangements.

When I first went back to work my mother had my daughter for two days a week, with a childminder having her the other three days. It was not only a lovely way for my mother and daughter to bond, but also saved me lots of money in childcare fees!

After I had been back at work for about a year, my mother fell ill. Although she recovered, she no longer felt capable of looking after my daughter and so I tried to arrange for the childminder to look after her all week," Julie said. "Unfortunately, the childminder was not able to have her for the other two days, so I would spend ages juggling diaries and days off with my husband, my mother-in-law and other friends. It just wasn’t a permanent solution, so I decided to look into flexible working.”

Options Available

The options for flexible working include home working, teleworking, job sharing, compressed hours (fitting the same amount of work into fewer hours), flexi-time (doing a certain amount of hours per week/day at times of your choosing) and term-time working only.

“I knew that I would be able to do my work within compressed hours, but I also knew that another colleague had her request for that denied, due to her being unable to prove her capabilities," Julie said. "I decided that I would write a very detailed presentation to highlight why I knew I could achieve this, such as detailing other projects I had worked on, clarifying the childcare I had in place, and illustrating how my home-office set up would enable me to deal with any issues outside of work hours. I took this presentation to my line manager and HR manager, and I’m pleased to say they accepted my request for flexible working on the condition that the situation is reviewed in six months. That review is planned for a few weeks time and I am hoping it will continue as it has been very positive.”