Flexible working meaning

This Checklist outlines actions to raise awareness of, and enhance, well-being within the in-house legal team. Management training and development - equip managers with the core capabilities and insight to properly oversee and champion team well-being by making sure they are trained in: mental health awareness and recognising early warning signs. See Practice Notes: Understanding mental health and well-being and Well-being in legal teams emotional intelligence and effective active listening skills. See Practice Note: Unlocking your emotional intelligence-how working better with others helps to put you ahead conducting supportive well-being conversations setting the tone by being self-aware Mental health support structure - establish supportive systems and resources...

In this issue Working time and flexible working Pay Tax Prohibited conduct (discrimination etc) Employment tribunal equality claims Diversity and gender pay gap Industrial action Unfair dismissal Employment tribunals Immigration Northern Ireland ESG and sustainability: employment issues Daily and weekly news alerts Dates for your diary Trackers New Q&As Working time and flexible working Code of Practice (Requests for Flexible Working) Order 2024 (SI 2024/429): The Order designates 6 April 2024 as the date on which the updated Code of Practice on handling requests for flexible working, issued by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) under section 199 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULR(C)A 1992), takes effect. It also clarifies that the revised Code does not cover applications for flexible working made under section 80F of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA 1996) that are lodged on or before 5 April 2024;...

In this issue: Horizon scanning Status and worker categories Employment contract Protected characteristics Diversity and gender pay gap Maternity, parents and carers Whistleblowing Dates for your diary Trackers Employment resources on Lexis+® LexTalk®Employment: a Lexis®Nexis community Daily and weekly news alerts Horizon scanning HoC Library publishes briefing on progress of Employment Rights Bill 2024–25. The House of Commons (HoC) Library has issued a briefing tracking the Employment Rights Bill 2024–25 (ERB) through its stages to date. It distils the main strands of debate, including unfair dismissal, flexible working, statutory sick pay, family leave, harassment protections, fire and rehire practices, sectoral collective bargaining in education and adult social care, trade union rules, and labour market enforcement. It also summarises amendments made so far. See: LNB News 13/02/2025 53. Status and worker categories DBT keeps Commercial Agents Regulations unchanged after consultation. The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has completed its consultation...

Pryce v Accountant in Backruptcy , ET Case No: 6000082/2022 John-Paul Pryce obtained a declaration from the Employment Tribunal that Accountant in Bankruptcy, Scotland’s debt management agency, had failed to make a reasonable adjustment for his agoraphobia, claustrophobia, anxiety and mysophobia (an extreme and irrational fear of germs) when it rejected his request for flexible working arrangements. Judge Mark Whitcombe, writing on behalf of a three-person panel, noted that Pryce’s phobias were so intense that even thinking about the idea of being indoors with other people could set off a panic attack...

CASE HUB ARCHIVED This archived case hub sets out the position as at the judgment dated 18/01/2019; it is no longer maintained. See further, timeline and commentary Case facts Outline J Sainsbury plc and Asda Group Limited appealed two decisions about the procedural timetable for their proposed merger with each other, arising during the CMA’s review. The decisions concerned: the deadlines by which the parties had to respond to a range of working papers; the timing set for the parties’ main party hearing. Parties J Sainsbury plc (Sainsbury’s) and Asda Group Limited (Asda). Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Background On 12 December 2018, Sainsbury’s and Asda made an application to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) seeking judicial review of the CMA’s timetable and procedure within its investigation into the proposed merger between the parties (see further, J Sainsbury/Asda). On 19 September 2018, the CMA referred the proposed merger to an in-depth...

Employment laws in the Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and Northern Ireland have much in common, as all operate within common law systems and many contemporary employment statutes flow from European Directives. Even so, divergences do exist and are likely to widen. This Practice Note outlines several distinctions between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. Care is advised when handling matters in Northern Ireland, where the framework is becoming increasingly distinct from Great Britain. For details on the differences between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, see Practice Note: Northern Ireland employment law. Main areas of difference employment status categories leave entitlements qualifying period and remedies under unfair dismissals legislation redundancy entitlements protected conversations and settlement agreements employment tribunal procedures transfers of undertakings (TUPE) immigration Categories of employment status In the Republic of Ireland, individuals engaged in work are typically classified as either ‘employees’ or ‘independent contractors’. There is no...

FORTHCOMING CHANGE : From 6 April 2026, section 35 of the Employment Rights Act 2025 is brought into force (by regulation 3 of The Employment Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 2 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/323). It obliges employers to maintain records sufficient to demonstrate, and adequate to show, whether they have complied in full with the entitlements in regulations 13(1) (annual leave), 13A(1) (additional annual leave), 15B(2) (annual leave for irregular and part-year workers) and 16(1) (holiday pay), and with the requirements in regulations 14(2) (payment in lieu of annual leave), 14(6) (payment in lieu of annual leave) and 15E(2) (payment in lieu of annual leave for irregular and part-year workers) of the Working Time Regulations 1998 (WTR 1998), SI 1998/1833, and to retain those records for six years from the date of creation by employers. This duty applies in addition to that in WTR 1998, regulation 9 (see: Working time records below). This Practice Note is being updated to reflect these changes....

Dear [ insert name of worker ] Working Time Regulations 1998 establish fundamental provisions covering areas like maximum working hours, night shifts, rest breaks and holidays. These Regulations allow us to adjust those fundamentals so they accommodate the needs and demands of our business. We apply this flexibility by entering into what is referred to as a workforce agreement in order to meet business requirements effectively...

1.1 The Company considers that job-sharing, alongside the appropriate use of part-time roles, brings advantages to both: 1.1.1 individual employees who, owing to family responsibilities, further education, other interests, or other reasons, prefer not to work full time; and 1.1.2 the business, through preserving and retaining skills and experience that might otherwise be lost to the Company. 1.2 Job-sharing is distinct from part-time work. A part-time role is a complete job carried out for fewer hours each week than a full-time post. Job-sharing involves two people sharing one full-time job. All functions are split and allocated between two employees. Each person holds the same breadth of duties as the full-time position, but performs them at different times from their job-share partner. Accordingly, job-sharing is fundamentally a partnership or collaboration between the two people sharing the role, and it can succeed only when they work well together. 1.3 Job-sharing can be introduced in three ways. First, the Company...

1 Introduction 1.1 This policy outlines the Company’s arrangements for homeworking, which may be introduced from time to time, as and when necessary, on a short-term basis in response to government advice and requirements relating to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 1.2 These homeworking measures are exceptional, and their use does not create any entitlement to work from home on a permanent basis. 1.3 [[ For further information on our approach to homeworking on a regular full-time or part-time basis, please see our [ Homeworking policy ]. ] [ For details of our hybrid working approach, where staff spend part of their working time at the workplace and part working from home or another suitable remote location, see our [ Hybrid working policy ]. ] [ Where an employee submits a home or hybrid working request that amounts to a statutory flexible working request, it will be handled under our [ Flexible working policy ]. ]] 1.4 This policy applies to all employees, workers, and...

Weekly rest periods Under the Working Time Regulations 1998 (WTR 1998), SI 1998/1833, reg 11(1), an adult worker has a right to an unbroken rest period of at least 24 hours in each seven-day period during which they work for their employer. Alternatively, within any 14-day window, the employer can provide either two 24-hour rest periods, or one 48-hour rest period. The Health & Safety Executive is tasked with enforcing the maximum weekly working time, limits on night work and health assessments for night work, but it does not police time off, paid annual leave or rest break entitlements. These rights are instead enforced by workers through a complaint under WTR 1998, SI 1998/1833, reg 30, alleging that the employer has failed to allow the exercise of the relevant entitlement. For further detail, see the section of the Practice Note: Hours of work and working time titled ‘Weekly rest periods’. The drafting of WTR 1998, SI 1998/1833, reg 11 is couched in terms of entitlement rather than obligation; ie...

For information: regarding the revised Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), see Practice Note: Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (extended version 1 July to 31 October 2020) [Archived] concerning holiday and holiday pay during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, see Practice Note: Coronavirus (COVID-19)—holiday and holiday pay [Archived] for general holiday and holiday pay matters, see Practice Notes: Holiday and Holiday pay It is clear that: employees may take holiday whilst on furlough the statutory framework for working out holiday pay applies to furloughed staff in exactly the same way as it does to those not on furlough See the section of Practice Note: Coronavirus (COVID-19)—holiday and holiday pay [Archived] entitled: Furloughed workers, under the heading ‘Holiday pay’. The BEIS guidance Holiday entitlement and pay during coronavirus (COVID-19) has not been updated since it was first published in May 2020, and does not specifically address flexible furlough under the revised CJRS...