Growing number of flexible working refusals end in Tribunal
An increasing number of employees are taking their bosses to court after they have been refused flexible working requests, according to new research. Employment Tribunal decisions on a mixture of remote and office-based working have jumped more than 50% in the past year to 193, employment law firm GQ|Littler has found. 127 Tribunal decisions were recorded in 2019/2020.
The rise in cases has likely been pushed by employers championing the march back to the office, after employees had a taste of a new way of working, the law firm explained.
Speaking to Personnel Today, lawyers explained that in order to turn down a flexible working request from an eligible employee, employers must consider that one or more of eight prescribed reasons apply and reference it/them in their refusal. The most commonly utilised, said GQ|Littler lawyers, were that flexible working would have a “detrimental impact on performance” or a “detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand”.
The following are permitted reasons for refusing a request:
- Burden of additional costs.
- Detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand.
- Inability to reorganise work among existing staff.
- Inability to recruit additional staff.
- Detrimental impact on quality.
- Detrimental impact on performance.
- Insufficiency of work during the period the employee proposes to work.
- Planned structural changes.
Claims brought to the Employment Tribunals over flexible working are often brought alongside discrimination claims. One example seen by the firm’s lawyers involved a new mother who was awarded £185,000 by a Tribunal, which ruled she had suffered indirect sex discrimination when her employer refused to consider her flexible working request.
Partner at GQ|Littler, Sophie Vanhegan said:
“The rise in cases relating to flexible working suggests this is becoming a battleground within some businesses. We may just be seeing the beginning of a tranche of claims taken against employers who’ve failed to deal with flexible working requests in a ‘reasonable manner’.”
Vanhegan warned that employees may begin to “vote with their feet” should employers use “heavy-handed” approaches to flexible working.
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