Flexible working rules to cost SMEs time and money

The new flexible working rules that came into effect on the 30'th of June will make administrative tasks even more difficult and time consuming for small and medium enterprises, the Forum of Private Business has recently warned.

The new rules set out by the Government state that all employees are allowed to request to have an application to work flexibly considered, provided they have been continuously employed for 26 weeks. The application can cover a change of hours, days of work or location of work and there is no requirement to link this request to the care of another person, adult or child.

Phil Orford MBE, chief executive of the Forum of Private Business, had this to say about the government's new set of rules: "Our members recognise the benefits of flexible working and wherever possible have sought to work with employees to provide flexible working options.

"However, extending the right to request flexible working to all employees will simply make the consideration process the employer needs to follow more complicated and time-consuming and only add to the administrative pressures already felt by many small business owners. In particular, with no requirement to link the request to caring responsibilities, this greatly increases the range and number of requests that can be made and therefore there is considerable scope for employees to judge that their request may not have been considered fairly."

Putting in place a powerful and intelligent workforce management system could help reduce the burden on Offices Services and Admin departments, and Tensor's WinTA.NET solution is the most solid, reliable and cost-effective tool for the job.

The system can supply working rules for a variety of purposes, from simple determination of overtime by the number of daily hours worked, to the more complex payment of overtime hours adjusted when periodic targets are not met. The system also contains special rules to accommodate the formal flexitime contracts worked by many public sector employees. Workers paid on an annual contract basis can receive reports stating how many contracted hours they have yet to work.

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