From April around 3.7 million parents of young or disabled children will be able to ask their employers to allow them to work flexible hours so they can better manage work and childcare responsibilities.
The Government introduced the new family-friendly rules in the Employment Act 2002 as part of its campaign to promote work-life balance. Around two million fathers and 1.5 million mothers with children aged under six, and 200,000 parents with disabled children up to the age of 18, will have a right to request flexible working hours (see box). At the same time the Act will introduce paternity leave for fathers and adoptive fathers and improvements to statutory maternity leave and pay (see box).
While these changes will be welcome to childcare staff, what impact will they have on early years employers? A very beneficial one according to nurseries that have adopted flexible working as they say it can help settings address one of the major problems facing the sector: staff recruitment and retention.
Kinderquest nursery chain has almost halved staff turnover rates from a peak of 30 per cent since introducing a framework of flexible working policies in 2001. The chain has been so effective that the Department of Trade and Industry cites its pioneering employment policies as a best practice case study in its Work Life Balance campaign.
Kinderquest's human resources manager Sharon Williams is quick to reassure nursery managers who worry that implementing the new laws could involve hours of administrative juggling in trying to meet requests for flexible hours while maintaining staff ratios. She argues that with improved staff retention managers spend less time, money and effort on recruitment and retention while the staff team prospers through greater continuity, stability and motivation.
The range of flexible working options open to Kinderquest staff includes:
* Compressed working week (ie 40 hours over four days with one day off)
* Part-time hours
* Study leave
* Shorter days, for example to fit in with school hours
* Career breaks for staff who want to take unpaid leave to travel
* Childcare
* Home based working for regional managers
* Job sharing at all levels.
Ms Williams says when an employee applies to work flexible hours, 'Kinderquest deals with each request on an individual basis taking into account the specific needs of the nursery. If we are not able to meet the request immediately it will be re-considered at a future agreed date. In addition, if we can't accommodate a specific need in one nursery, staff will have the opportunity to request a transfer to a nursery that is able to accommodate their request.
'Clearly we have an advantage as a large group, with several nurseries in most areas in which we operate. The likelihood of being able to meet the needs of the staff member is high.'
However, single-site nurseries can be just as imaginative. Linda Baston-Pitt, proprietor of the Old School House Day Nursery in Stetchworth, Cambridgeshire, has adopted a range of policies after winning a training grant last year from the Government's Work Life Balance Challenge Fund. The grant paid for a consultant to assist in the development of flexible working strategies which go beyond people's basic hours.
'Recruitment and retention are problems for the sector generally and we wanted to look at ways of addressing these issues. We wanted to challenge the conventional ways of doing things and think about whether they could be done in other ways,' says Ms Baston-Pitt.
'We have someone on maternity leave now who has trained as an assessor. She will be able to come back as an assessor and work flexibly, fitting in the hours with her home life.'
Ms Baston-Pitt is also looking at ways to offer flexibility within the working day. 'We cope with providing flexibility during the day by using our Modern Apprenticeship students as supernumeraries so staff can plan with the room supervisor to leave the room to do their administrative work, write up assessments or spend time on planning.
'We started thinking about what we can offer here that people need to get done during the day and would otherwise have to be done at home after work.
One idea is car washing. Someone in the village comes up at lunchtime and washes the staff's cars.
'People also find they have not got time to go home after work and then go off to the gym. We arranged for a personal trainer to come in at 6pm and take an hour's exercise class. It is not a huge cost and has benefits for our staff in that they are healthier - and our sickness level is below two per cent.'
Childcare Corporation has gone further than the Government and recently announced a flexible working policy for staff members who have children aged under 16. Marketing director Stephanie Nimmo says, 'We have to reach a balance between being a commercial organisation and responding to the fact that most of our staff are women who want families.
'We invest a lot in their training and we think our parents like their children to be cared for by mature staff, people with their own children.
We have a room senior in our Kiddi Caru Day Nursery in Colchester who was having problems juggling her required shifts with being able to drop her daughter off at her childminder. She now works afternoon shifts only which complements another staff member who works morning shifts only in order to be home for her teenage children returning from school.'
The chain's head office staff are allowed to work compressed days by taking shorter lunch breaks but Ms Nimmo says this initiative will not be extended to nursery staff as they need to take their full breaks to cope with the pressures of their work.
THE EMPLOYMENT ACT 2002
Eligibility to apply for flexible working:
* Employees eligible to make a request must have a child under six, or under 18 in the case of a disabled child, and have worked with their employer continuously for 26 weeks at the date the application is made.
* They must not have made another application to work flexibly under the Act during the past 12 months.
* Employers can refuse applications to work flexibly if they are unable to accommodate the employee's desired work plan.
* The employee must be making the application to enable them to care for their child.
* The Act aims to facilitate discussion and encourage both the employee and employer to consider flexible working patterns and to find a solution that suits them both.
* Eligible employees will be able to request:
* a change to the hours they work
* a change to the times when they are required to work
* to work from home.
The procedure:
* The onus is on employees to apply in writing.
* The employer must discuss the request with the employee within 28 days of receiving the request.
* The employer should write to the employee within 14 days of the meeting to either agree to the new work pattern and a start date or provide clear business grounds as to why the application cannot be accepted.
* The employee has the right to appeal their employer's decision within 14 days of being notified.
The new law also introduces extended maternity leave and increased maternity pay:
* 26 weeks' paid and a further 26 weeks' unpaid maternity leave or leave for adoptive mothers
* An increase in the standard rate of Statutory Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance from 75 to 100 (or 90 per cent of a mother's average weekly earnings if this is less than 100)
* Two weeks' paid paternity leave for working fathers and adoptive fathers paid at the same rate as maternity pay.
The Government is aware of the extra burdens these changes place on employers, particularly small firms. Existing arrangements for employers to recover Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) will continue.
Employers are able to claim back 92 per cent of the payments they make, with those eligible for small employers' relief able to claim back 100 per cent.
Small firms will also be able to claim compensation for the employer's portion of National Insurance contributions paid on SMP. Under new arrangements, employers who need to will be able to receive funding in advance for payments of SMP from the Inland Revenue.
Further information: www.dti.gov.uk/er/review.htm.
