Flexible working rejection letter

If you wish to reject an employee’s flexible working request, you must provide one or more genuine business reasons for the refusal and you should set out any additional information which is reasonable to help explain your decision. You should also allow your employee to appeal the decision. Be particularly careful with flexible working applications made by women returning from maternity leave.

Rejection of request

If, after holding a meeting with the employee and carefully considering their flexible working application, you decide to refuse it, you must inform them of your decision in writing without unreasonable delay and you should clearly explain the business reasons for your refusal. You should also set out any additional information which is reasonable to help explain your decision and you should give the employee the option to appeal your decision, including explaining how to appeal and the timeframe for doing so. Note. You cannot refuse a flexible working request unless the employee has first been consulted about their request and you can only refuse it for one or more specified statutory business reasons, these being:

• the burden of additional costs

• a detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand

• an inability to reorganise work amongst existing staff

• an inability to recruit additional staff

• a detrimental impact on quality

• a detrimental impact on performance

• insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work

• planned structural changes to the business.

These reasons are covered in the Flexible Working Rejection Letter.

Tribunal challenge

If you fail to deal with the employee’s flexible working request in a reasonable manner, fail to notify them of your decision within the two-month decision period or fail to provide a genuine business reason for refusing the request, or if your decision is based on incorrect facts, the employee can complain to an employment tribunal. The tribunal doesn’t have the power to challenge the commercial validity of your decision but it can require you to reconsider the employee’s request and/or award compensation of up to eight weeks’ pay (subject to the statutory maximum cap on a week’s pay).

Indirect discrimination

A refusal to permit a female employee to work on a part-time basis (usually on their return from maternity leave) may result in a claim of indirect sex discrimination as a provision requiring employees to work full time has a disproportionate adverse impact on women due to the fact that women are more likely to be the primary child carers. If your requirement has a detrimental impact on the particular female employee in question, you would then need to be able to objectively justify your decision as being a proportionate means of meeting a legitimate business aim. Therefore, where a female employee makes a flexible working request on their return from maternity leave, don’t just assume that if you follow a reasonable procedure and then turn them down for one of the specified business reasons, you will be safe. You need to be aware of the risk of an indirect sex discrimination claim so negotiate with them and explore all available options such as job shares, part-time working, homeworking, etc. In addition, bear in mind that you are under a statutory duty to make reasonable adjustments to work provisions, criteria or practices in relation to disabled employees in order to ensure they are not placed at a substantial disadvantage compared to non-disabled employees.