Umbrella contractors will be interested to learn that Maria Miller, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has said that flexible working should be thought of as a normal way of working.
The MP for Basingstoke said that businesses have dismissed flexible working as burdensome for too long. UK firms needs to move away from this mentality and consider flexible working as the norm rather than the exception. We live in a world where fathers want to play a bigger role in family life, people work past the normal retirement age and an increasing number of disabled people want to have a job. Most people will consider flexible working at some stage during their working life.
Fathers in both the private and public sector are definitely benefiting from flexible working, according to research findings released by Working Families.
The study discovered that fathers who have adopted a flexible working regime feel less stressed and have a greater sense of wellbeing than their counterparts who have a strict full-time working hours regime.
Michelle Chance from the law firm Kingsley Napley, says that gender issues in the workplace should equalise as more fathers opt for flexible working. However, she has real concerns that the coalition’s recent plan to extend the right to ask for flexible working to all employees in a business will have an adverse affect on working parents’ rights. Employers will face an administrative nightmare if they are to balance the competing rights of employees and avoid costly litigation.
Last month, the government launched a consultation into the introduction of flexible parental leave and extending the right to request flexible working.
John Walker, the national chairman of the FSB, welcomes the decision to reform parental leave but points out small businesses find it extremely complicated to administer flexible working and the rules need to be adapted to suit the needs of each individual firm.
It will also be burdensome for very small firms if they have to allow couples to take chunks of leave rather than the current single block. The FSB would like to see a situation whereby staff tell their employers about their leave intentions from the outset so businesses have ample time to prepare.
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