It’s time to distinguish between Flexible and Hybrid working.
Demystifying the different terms we use for the diverse ways in which we now work.
Last week we saw everyone from Jeremy Vine to the Education Minister, Jacqui Smith, talking about flexible working. However, the language being used in the media is contributing to the confusion felt by both employees and employers alike.
The BBC coverage:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gl5w83z7do
Within our latest update we hope to explain the differences in terminology and demonstrate the importance of correctly identifying different arrangements to avoid confusion.
We are all now familiar with the terms hybrid working, working from home and flexible working. We can all be guilty of using these terms interchangeably, especially when discussing the challenges of attracting and retaining talent. But doing this can create confusion and lead employers down the wrong path, causing potential legal issues. So what are the differences and why should we take care to use the correct terminology?
Flexible working
In HR terms refers to a process, it is not an agreement but the means in which an agreement can be reached or refused – that’s the first point to make.
So what is flexible working?
In terms of employment law and the risk of a claim this is the most important category which employers must take note of. Why? – because employees have a statutory right to make a request for flexible working.
Until April this year the employee needed to have accrued 26 weeks of continuous service and not have made a formal flexible working request within the past year in order to be eligible. Since April this changed removing the length of service and the cap on the number of requests, so employees can now make a Flexible Working Request from day 1.
The employee can make a request and the request could be for a wide range of working arrangements, such as moving to part-time, working from different locations, working term-time only, or simply amending their start and finish times.
Once the employer has followed the statutory process in terms of hearing the request, the employer can either agree to the change or refuse it. If it is agreed this is then the point at which we should correctly categorise the arrangement which is coming into place between the employee and the employer. Many of the outcomes are self-explanatory, part time, job share but here are some of the others that can be misunderstood.
When to refer to hybrid working?
This tends to refer to the place of work, not the hours of work and gives the employee the choice of working between the office and another workplace or their home. In the last 12 or so months we have seen this move further into “work from anywhere” policies, where the employer is happy for the employee to work from other countries or whilst visiting family, avoiding the need to take annual leave.
When to refer condensed hours?
Example – A team member working compressed hours works their total contracted hours over fewer working days a week. Whilst contracted to 38 hours per week they opt to complete these hours over 4 days a week, working longer hours on each of the 4 days.
What is term time working?
Whilst term dates differ from school to school as a general rule this arrangement means the team member has a contractual requirement to work anywhere from 38 to 42 weeks per year and all of these weeks will be in term time.
What about flexi time?
A company states what their core hours are; let’s say 10am till 3pm Monday to Friday and team members are then able to vary their start and finish times each day. The company is happy to allow this to vary day to day so long as the employee reaches their contractual hours over the course of the week, and is at work during the ‘core’ window. This can also be combined with other patterns like hybrid or annualised hours working as well.
What are annualised hours?
This can be used as a way of calculating a team member’s hours in any of the other arrangements and it simply refers to having an annual limit to achieve, rather than a weekly number of hours. These arrangements usually include an annualised salary as well but it’s not essential, especially for businesses whose income is very seasonal. With annualised salary payment the salary is the estimated payment an employee would receive over a year should they work the full year.
Conclusion
It is important for companies and managers to use the correct terminology and to ensure that they do not add to the confusion within their internal policies. We would certainly recommend that every company has a flexible working policy. However, if you do have employees working from home, hybrid working or any of the other arrangements you should also consider guidance on these and try to set your policies out in a way that avoids confusion. One obvious way to do this is to separate out the process of making a request and the possible outcomes that a request could result in, similar to how they are categorised here.
We hope this has clarified the rules as they currently stand. It’s worth noting that further changes are being proposed to what employees can request, but we shall keep you up to date on those in the coming weeks. All of these updates and more shall be discussed during our annual Law Update, which we’ll be hosting once again in November. More on that next week!
If you would like to learn more about our Employment Law services then please visit our website or contact one of Business Partners at [email protected]