Glasgow Employment Law Blog

Richard Branson’s recent blog post, Why we’re letting Virgin staff take as much holiday as they want, announced the introduction of a ‘(non) policy’ for parent company employees - essentially leaving them to decide when and for how long they will take annual leave.

From 30th June the right to request flexible working will extend to all employees who have been working continuously for 26 weeks.

Flexible working covers types of employment contract as well as places of work, enabling employees and employers to vary traditional working patterns. Examples of typical flexible working arrangements include job sharing, working from home and changing the hours or times of work.

Under the new employment rules, the right to request flexible working will be extended and the complex statutory procedure for dealing with requests replaced:

The number of employers making changes to working patterns in a positive move to try and reduce long-term absence levels has increased by 20% in the last year alone, according to figures released by the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development.

UK organisations could enjoy cost reductions and productivity gains running up to £8.1bn, or 0.5% of GDP, by optimising their approach to flexible working, according to a report published by the think tank RSA and Vodafone UK.