That’s the fear, and you can feel it in the lift between floors.
The lift doors open on the 8th floor and a dozen heads pop up, half from hot-desks, half from screens propped on shoeboxes. It’s Tuesday, the official “anchor day”, and the office still sounds like a library. A manager leans against the wall, phone to ear, rehearsing reasons to turn down a request for three school-day shifts. She pauses, watching a colleague nurse a buggy into a meeting pod. Someone has brought banana bread. Someone else is half-typing, half-eyeing the clock for the nursery run.
I watch a Slack ping light up three screens at once: “Can we discuss my pattern next week?” Fourteen words that can scramble a rota and rattle a budget. The HR lead exhales, slow and long, then starts listing “business grounds” like a catechism. She knows one wrong step won’t just annoy a team. It could end up in front of a judge. And judges, lately, have been paying attention.
Then a line lands in my notebook that sticks like a burr: this isn’t a perk any more. It’s becoming a right. A right with teeth.
The moment flexible work stopped being a fringe benefit
What changed wasn’t one office memo or a trendy policy rebrand. It was the law moving a notch, and case law using that notch like a lever. The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023 kicked in this spring with a day-one right to request, faster deadlines, and a nudge to genuinely consult. Tribunals have been sharpening the edges for years, especially where childcare or disability sits behind a request.
In Thompson v Manors, a London estate agency’s refusal of school‑friendly hours ended with a six‑figure award and a headline that made managers wince. Dobson v North Cumbria etched something even bigger into the record: the “childcare disparity” is real, and women still shoulder it more often. That matters in court. It turns a calendar clash into potential indirect sex discrimination if an employer can’t produce real evidence for why the pattern won’t work.
Put those pieces together and you get a new balance of power. Not a free-for-all. A tilt. If an upcoming appeal court judgment leans further toward “show me your evidence, not your hunch,” many standard refusals won’t survive scrutiny. **That single ruling wouldn’t write a new statute; it would simply set a bar so high that vague objections can’t clear it.** The panic you sense in office corridors is about that bar, not about beanbags and hoodies.
How the panic spread from legal teams to line managers
The legal rules are dry, but the fear is warm-blooded. Inside HR, people are quietly rewriting templates. “Business grounds” is no longer a phrase to drop into paragraph three; it’s a demand for data. That means diary audits, customer maps, productivity snapshots, and trial notes, not just a feeling that Wednesdays are busy. It also means a real conversation with the employee about alternatives, documented and timed.
Numbers travel faster than memos. ONS data shows hybrid working has settled in as a habit rather than a fad, with a solid chunk of the workforce splitting time across home and office each week. At the same time, employee surveys suggest two-thirds consider flexibility a top factor in loyalty. Put those together and the cost of a clumsy refusal isn’t just legal exposure. It’s attrition. It’s a team reshuffle that no one budgeted for. Let’s be honest: nobody actually does that every day.
The case lawyers whisper about is whichever one lands next at the Employment Appeal Tribunal and nails down the idea that evidence must be specific and contemporaneous. **If that standard is confirmed, a generic “we need collaboration” won’t cut it without a map of tasks that truly need same‑time, same‑place presence.** Requests won’t become automatic, yet the default mood shifts from “convince us” to “prove we can’t.” One sentence in a judgment can do that. We’ve all had that moment when a rule you thought was soft suddenly bites.
Practical moves: what works when the stakes feel high
Start by treating every request like a mini‑project. Create a one‑page brief: the role’s core outputs, where and when they actually happen, dependencies, and measurable outcomes. Then schedule a 30‑minute consult just to explore scenarios. Swap a hard no for a four‑week pilot with clear metrics. At the end, review what changed, what broke, and what surprised you.
Document as you go. Snapshots beat stories. Capture inbound volume by hour, client response times, error rates, and team hand‑offs. If you say Tuesdays need bodies on the floor, show the Tuesdays. If a call centre can’t stagger lunches without losing service-level agreements, chart the queue. **Vague vibes are the fastest route to a tribunal you didn’t plan to attend.** Be human in tone with your team, but forensic with your notes.
When you turn down a request, offer an alternative in writing. If you grant it, set a review date and an exit ramp. That’s not cold; that’s clarity.
“Flexible working isn’t a favour, it’s a design choice. Good design is tested, measured and iterated,” a City HR director told me, half-laughing, half‑grimacing.
Then keep a small toolkit to stay sane:
- Run 30‑day trials with two metrics that matter.
- Publish anchor hours and quiet hours for the team.
- Pair every remote day with a collaboration ritual, not just another meeting.
- Use a simple “coverage board” so gaps don’t become dramas.
- Rotate “in‑office leads” so presence isn’t a penalty for the same few.
What one judgment would actually change — and what it wouldn’t
The nightmare scenario in boardrooms isn’t a flood of whimsical asks. It’s the legal threshold shifting so far toward evidence that standard templates crumble. A strong appellate judgment could harden three expectations at once: real consultation, real evidence for each ground, and real consideration of alternatives. That trio would make lazy refusals radioactive. It would not abolish the eight statutory business grounds. It would force them to be proved, not merely invoked.
Here’s why that matters beyond litigation. When managers start winning by measuring, they end up learning what actually needs the office. Client workshops, security‑sensitive work, mentoring sprints, live service coverage: these show up in the data. Noise, presenteeism and calendar theatre fade. The office becomes a tool, not a shrine. Employees see the logic. Morale steadies. The panic ebbs because reality is on the page, not in the ether.
Some will push back, and some roles really are place‑bound. Labs, front desks, warehouses, theatres, trading floors at certain hours. That’s fine. Say it, show it, and pay for it. The rest of the economy runs on tasks that can flex around time or place or both. If a single judgment locks in a “show your workings” era, the winners will be those already doing the maths.
There’s a human undercurrent here that gets lost in memos. Parents juggling school gates, carers wrangling appointments, neurodivergent colleagues finding their flow at different times. Flex helps them bring the best of their work to your goals. Ignore that and you lose talent that won’t come back. Talk about it, measure it, and you might build a team that sticks around long after the headlines cool. **The law can move fast; culture is slower, but it lasts longer.**
| Point clé | Détail | Intérêt pour le lecteur |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence over assertion | Courts expect specific, dated proof for refusal grounds | Know what to collect before saying no |
| Consult, don’t dictate | New Acas Code pushes genuine dialogue and alternatives | Reduce legal risk and keep goodwill |
| Pilots beat theory | Short trials with two metrics reveal what really works | Faster decisions, fewer regrets |
FAQ :
- What changed in UK law this year?The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023 made the right to request a day‑one right, sped up decision times, and embedded consultation via the updated Acas Code.
- Can my employer still refuse a flexible working request?Yes. The eight statutory business grounds remain. The pressure is on to evidence those grounds with specifics, not generalities.
- What kind of evidence actually helps in a refusal?Data on coverage gaps by hour, client turnaround times, security or confidentiality needs, costs of re‑rostering, and results of any trial that showed harm to service or quality.
- Do I need a lawyer to make a request?No. Keep it practical: what you need, when it starts, the impact on your role, and how you’ll mitigate. One page is enough if it’s clear.
- We’re managers. How do we stop this from becoming chaos?Set anchor hours, rotate on‑site duties, run time‑boxed trials, and publish simple coverage plans. It feels like extra work the first month. It saves months later.
