What is the Law on Flexible Working?

The aim of the Law on Flexible Working is to offer employees options to change the balance between their working and private lives. So someone can ask to work fewer hours (or indeed more), different working hours, for example the same number of hours in a year, but spread over more days, or to be able to work from home. This may become necessary because your employee has to take care of a chronically ill child, or wants to study while still working, or simply wants to spend less time working.

The best thing is for an employee to come and talk to you first of all to state what they want. Sometimes you may be able to sort something out for a limited time without formally adjusting the number or timing of their working hours. If someone has problems with the menopause, you can probably agree with them that they can start work later for a while because they are not sleeping properly. You obviously need to have the flexibility to do this within your organisation. If not, then you can refer the employee to the Law on Flexible Working.

In order to adjust the number of working hours (per week) the following preconditions apply:

• The employee must have been employed by the organisation for at least 26 weeks;
• The employee must submit their request in writing at least 2 months before the start date they want.
• The written request must always include the following details: the requested starting date, the requested work location and the requested number or hours per week (and potentially how the hours are spread if that is also changing).

As manager, you are legally required to react at the latest one month before the date on which your employee wants the change to begin. You cannot just reject a request like this out of hand. That is anyway a very bad idea because if you do not react at all, the request is automatically approved. A female employee who started working full-time and then wants to work less after her pregnancy is not doing so just for fun, and support from you as her manager at times like this is needed to maintain good working relations. For the employee, it is great if you can show that you understand this, and work with her to find a solution. You can only refuse if a serious interest is at stake, for example, if the operations or safety of the company would be at risk, or if there is no-one available to take over her work. Only if someone asks you if they can work from home do you have more freedom to refuse, but you must consider it. There too, it is more useful to the employee if you can show understanding and help to look for a solution.