Brown to Regulate Flexible Working

How can there be a law to require flexibility? It is an oxymoron. Brown had proposed that flexible working is available by law for working parents. This is typical of Brown.

A discussion is ongoing on the Political Betting site on this issue.

Flexible working only really works when everyone can do it. Letting one section of the workforce do it and effectively penalising the rest will only lead to more and greater problems.

The company I work for has had flexible working for a number of years but how it works for individuals is dependent upon type of job and ability to cover so-called “core” hours. There always has to be a bit of give and take between the nature of the job and reality. Some employers would be hard pressed to provide flexible working because of the type of work performed and the actual nature of the business.

Unfortunately most of the people in public sector jobs who are getting smaller rises will be exactly the sort of people whose jobs are difficult to cover with flexible working.Rather than regulation it would be better to push/advertise the benefits of flexible working to all employers with a happier and less stressed workforce.

It doesn’t depend on Union representation, private/public, small/large it just requires common sense from both employers and employees. I repeat how can there be a law to require flexibility?

The main thing about flexible working is it only really works when there is trust between employees and employers. If there is no trust then it will fail at the first hurdle, this would almost certainly be the case if only employees with kids were allowed flexible working. All the other “special” cases like people with elderly parents, invalid partners etc will justifiably feel excluded.

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