Flexible working, time off for education, equal rights for agency workers, increased enforcement for discrimination legislation.

The government announced yesterday its intention to develop its existing employment laws. Among the issues raised was the intention of implementing Sainsbury’s HR Director Imelda Walsh’s recommendation to extend the right to request flexible working to all parents of children under 16, the current compulsory school age, from April next year.

Commenting on the BBC news today, Imelda said that her review did not propose to change the current right for employers to refuse flexible working requests on one of the 8 set grounds currently in existence.  She commented that the intention of the flexible working legislation was to ensure that a dialogue takes place between employer and parent, and that in some cases it will be right for an employer to refuse a request following that dialogue.   Currently the right to request flexible working applies only to parents of children under 6, and we believe that increasing the age to 16 will encompass a further 4.5 million employees. To date 90% of flexible requests (which brings about a permanent change to the employee’s contract of employment) have been granted. 

Myhrdept.co.uk includes all of the letters and forms etc required for handling flexible working requests, and our policy & procedures will be updated in accordance with the implementation timetable for Imelda’s recommendations.

Also announced was the intention to provide a statutory right for employees to take paid time away from the workplace in order to train, the intention to strengthen the rights of agency workers (including pay parity with permanent employees doing similar jobs), and increased enforcement of discrimination legislation covering, amongst other things, disability, race, age and sex.  We expect more details to arrive on these issues in the Queen’s speech in November.