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.