Flexible Working for all

On the 12 January the Minister for Children, Beverley Hughes, said that she felt that workers without children should get the same right to request flexible working hours as parents. Currently only parents of children who are under 6 (or are disabled but under 18) are the ones to have the right to request flexible working.

The CBI’s Director of HR Policy, Susan Anderson, has concerns about any such change, saying “only by having a gradual and phased extension can be avoid firms being deluged under a sudden increase in requests”.

At Lawyers for Change we explore alternative ways of approaching things both within the legal system and beyond it. The problem we see with the ever increasing volume of regulation is the difficulty for people to know where they stand with the law. The law has to assume that everyone knows the law and yet the volume of law makes it impossible even for lawyers to be fully aware of the law, let alone individuals and medium to small businesses.

We see the idea of recognition of such trends in the form of flexible working to be desirable. Whether this needs to be done in the form of regulation, however, is an entirely different matter. Rather than dictating that behaviour, it makes more sense to educate people. If you tell a business that they will make more money if they offer flexible time and people can produce evidence of it, more people will take it on. If you force the issue, you risk resistance – just because something becomes the law does not mean that people comply. Approaching the subject of education from “enlightened self interest” is often far more effective. It also simplifies matters hugely.

From another perspective, Lawyers for Change also considers that happy lawyers lead to happy clients. The current trend is to focus first on satisfying clients to the exclusion of all else which results in some seriously stressed lawyers (often to the point of having drink or drug addictions) – on the day of writing this article The Evening Standard headline speaks of a lawyer jumping to his death.

In this context, Lawyers for Change would heartily recommend that other law firms explore what would be available to them and their clients by having a fulfilled and happy team of lawyers encouraged to develop themselves and their creativity for the benefit of all concerned. In this way we see flexible working as a far broader issue than mere flexibility as to working hours. What of shared jobs, unpaid leave opportunities, personal development training in-house, etc, etc?

In the first decade of the second millennium we are entering a more enlightened phase of business and society and, though the desire for legislation is not something the writer shares, the underlying principle is sound.