Whilst you can control your workforce and workplace, sometimes the best laid plans are undermined by external forces, especially roadworks. Staff are understandable stressed when their normal patterns of travel to and from work are disrupted, through no fault of their own. Ironically, the Employment Relations Act provides employees with the right to request a variation of their working arrangements and an employer must respond to a request as soon as possible but no later than 1 month after receiving the request.
Turn this around, and there can be no reason, in principle, why you as the employer cannot propose a ‘variation of the working arrangements’, which could include hours of work.
The types of flexible working arrangements could include
· Changing the start and/or finish times
· Changing the total number of hours worked. For example, requesting to move from full-time to part-time work
· Requesting to work from home
· Requesting to work at another company office
To initiate the consultation with your full timers, we recommend that you make the proposal, and ask the employees to put their feedback in writing. Any changes agreed need to be clearly documented as the agreement will amount to a legally binding variation to the terms and conditions of their employment and should clearly document the variation agreed, what the period of time it is to be varied, what the start/end dates are, and what changes, if any, the employer may need to make to the employer’s arrangements if the request is agreed (eg. security and access.)
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