Bosses made to justify why staff shouldn’t work from home
Bosses will have to host a meeting with staff who ask for flexible working and lay out their rationale for refusing, under a new policy outlined by Louise Haigh.
The cabinet office minister told a union gathering that business leaders would have to “properly consider” flexibility requests from staff and grant an in-person meeting to discuss the move.
“Life isn’t always as neat as we’d like it to be or as employers we would like it to be,” she told TUC conference delegates. “There’s kids to pick up, parents to look after, families who rely on us at short notice.”
“So today I can announce that we will strengthen the right to flexible working,” she added. “If an employer wants to turn down a request they will have to sit down with their employee, properly consider it and explain why.”
Ministers boost working from home rights
The move represents the government’s second intervention on home working since it came into power in 2024. Earlier this year, ministers also included measures to strengthen flexible working rights as part of its far-reaching Employment Rights Act, which also included measures like banning “exploitative zero hours contracts” and ending so-called fire and rehire.
In her keynote address, Haigh also heaped praise on unions for their assiduous campaigning to deliver the act, which employers have warned will choke off employment and add to their burden of red tape.
“Because of you, working people have had the biggest uplift in their rights in a generation,” she said. “Changes that won’t just transform lives today … but the lives of our children and our grandchildren.”
Unions have been lobbying for a change to working from home legislation for several years. They argue the measures are vital to ensure workplaces are inclusive for those with care responsibilities, health conditions and disabilities.
But shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith branded the measures a “shirkers’ charter” that would be abused by the public sector.
“Labour do not understand business,” he said. “They have already wrapped businesses up in red tape with their ‘unemployment act’, and now Louise Haigh and Angela Rayner are back, they want to crank up the pressure further.
“In the private sector, this is more job-sapping red tape, but in the public sector it will be a complete shirkers’ charter.”