Flexible working requests used to be something you only had to think about once an employee had been with you for six months. That qualifying period is gone. Since April 2024, the right to ask for flexible working — a different start time, compressed hours, hybrid or home working, a change to days worked — applies from an employee's very first day in the job. For a small employer used to treating this as a distant, occasional conversation, it's worth knowing exactly what the law now expects, because 'I didn't realise they could ask that soon' isn't a defence if you get the process wrong.
What actually changed, and what didn't
The right to request flexible working isn't new — it's existed in some form for years. What changed is who can ask and how quickly you have to respond. Every employee can now make a request from day one, they can make two requests in any 12-month period rather than one, and you have to respond within two months rather than three. You're also now required to consult with the employee before refusing a request, rather than simply rejecting it in writing.
What hasn't changed is the core shape of the right: it's a right to ask and to have the request considered seriously, not a right to be granted whatever is asked for. You can still say no — but only for one of a specific, limited set of business reasons, and only after genuinely engaging with the request first.
The reasons you're allowed to refuse
The law sets out a fixed list of grounds a refusal has to fit into: things like the burden of extra costs, an inability to reorganise work among other staff, an inability to recruit for the extra work, a detrimental effect on quality or performance, insufficient work during the periods proposed, or a planned structural change to the business. If your reason genuinely fits one of these, a refusal is lawful. What you can't do is refuse simply because it's inconvenient, because you've never done it before, or because you'd rather not have the conversation — a refusal needs a real, specific reason you could explain if challenged, not a gut feeling.
The request doesn't have to be granted. But it does have to be genuinely considered — and 'we don't really do that here' has never been one of the legal grounds for saying no.
What the process actually looks like
Get a request in writing — most employees will simply email or state it in a meeting, and that's enough, there's no special form required. From there, think it through properly: could the request work with some adjustment, even if not exactly as asked? Would a trial period answer the question better than a flat yes or no? If you're minded to refuse, talk to the employee first and explain your reasoning before putting a decision in writing, rather than presenting a rejection as a fait accompli. Then respond within two months, in writing, either agreeing (and confirming when the change starts and whether it's permanent), or refusing with the specific business ground you're relying on.
Where small employers get caught out
The most common mistake isn't refusing a request — it's handling it informally and never confirming anything in writing, so nobody's clear what was actually agreed, or by when. The second most common is treating the two-month window loosely, because there's no dramatic reminder when it starts ticking down from the day the request lands. The third, and the one worth taking most seriously, is refusing a request for a reason that sounds business-like on the surface but doesn't actually hold up — an employee who feels a refusal was really about convenience rather than a genuine business reason can bring a claim, and 'we didn't think it through properly' is an expensive thing to have to admit afterwards.
What a trial period buys you
One tool worth using more than most small employers realise is the trial period. Rather than committing to a permanent change on the back of a single request, you can agree to run the new pattern for six or eight weeks and review it against specific, named concerns — whether cover was maintained, whether a particular busy period was still handled, whether a two-person team genuinely coped with a compressed week. That gives you real evidence rather than a guess, and it gives the employee a fair shot at proving the arrangement works before either side commits permanently. It also tends to defuse the tension in a request that feels risky to grant outright, because nobody is locked in if it genuinely doesn't work.
A worked example: costing a request before you answer it
The refusal grounds are business reasons, and business reasons are much easier to defend once you've actually done the arithmetic. Take an illustrative case. An employee on £30,000 a year, working five days a week, asks to drop to four days on four days' pay — a genuine reduction in hours rather than the same hours squeezed into fewer days.
Start with what the change saves you. The salary falls to £24,000. Employer's National Insurance is 15% on earnings above the £5,000 secondary threshold, so it falls from £3,750 to £2,850. Auto-enrolment pension at the 3% employer minimum applies to qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £50,270, so it falls from £713 to £533. All in, the role goes from roughly £34,460 a year to £27,380 — a saving of about £7,080.
Now cost the gap, because that's where the refusal grounds actually live. One day a week is about 46 working days a year that somebody else has to cover. If covering it means overtime for existing staff or a temp at an effective £180 a day, that's £8,280 against a £7,080 saving — a net cost of roughly £1,200 a year plus the disruption of arranging it. If the day can be absorbed by dropping work that was never really earning its place, the cost is nil and the saving is real.
That single calculation does two useful things. It tells you honestly whether 'the burden of additional costs' or 'an inability to reorganise work among existing staff' genuinely applies, or whether you were about to reach for a ground that sounds official but wouldn't survive being asked to explain it. And it gives you something concrete to consult about: 'this costs us about £1,200 a year and 46 days of cover — is there a pattern where that lands better?' is a far more productive sentence than a flat no.
For scale on the downside, an employee whose request is mishandled can complain to an employment tribunal. A tribunal can't order you to grant the request, but it can order you to reconsider it properly and award up to eight weeks' pay. A week's pay is capped at £751 from 6 April 2026, so the ceiling is £6,008 — comfortably more than the entire first-year saving in the example above, before your own time and any legal costs.
Why this is worth getting right beyond the legal risk
There's a business case here too, separate from the compliance one. Flexible working requests are increasingly not a fringe ask — they come from parents, carers, people managing health conditions, people simply trying to build a sustainable working life, and a blanket instinct to say no risks losing good people over an arrangement that a bit of creative thinking could easily have accommodated. Plenty of small employers who've genuinely engaged with requests, rather than treating them as an inconvenience to manage, report that the flexibility cost them very little and kept a valued employee who might otherwise have left. Treat it as a genuine business decision worth thinking through properly, not just a legal box to tick, and you'll usually land somewhere both sides can live with.
The bit worth remembering
None of this means you have to say yes to every request, and plenty of small businesses genuinely can't accommodate every pattern an employee might ask for — a two-person shop can't easily run with both staff wanting the same day off, and that's a legitimate operational reality. What the law asks for is a fair, timely, genuinely-considered process, with a real reason behind any no. Build that habit now, get it in writing every time, and a request that could otherwise turn into a grievance or a tribunal claim usually stays exactly what it should be: a normal conversation about how someone works.
Common questions
Can I refuse a flexible working request just because it doesn't suit the business?
No — a refusal has to fit one of the eight statutory business grounds, and you have to say which one you are relying on. The grounds are the burden of additional costs, a detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand, an inability to reorganise work among existing staff, an inability to recruit additional staff, a detrimental impact on quality, a detrimental impact on performance, insufficient work during the periods the employee proposes to work, and planned structural changes. 'It doesn't suit us' is not on that list, although a genuine version of it usually maps onto one of the eight — the discipline is being made to name which, in writing. You must also consult the employee before refusing, and give your decision within two months.
What happens if I miss the two-month deadline?
The employee can take it to an employment tribunal, which is the same route open to them if you refuse on a ground that isn't one of the eight, refuse without consulting first, or otherwise handle the request unreasonably. A tribunal cannot order you to grant the request. It can order you to reconsider it properly and award compensation of up to eight weeks' pay, and with a week's pay capped at £751 from 6 April 2026 the ceiling is £6,008. The two months runs from the day the request lands, not from the day you get round to reading it, and it has to cover the whole process including any appeal — so diary the deadline the moment a request arrives rather than afterwards.
Does someone have to work here six months before they can ask?
No. The qualifying period was removed on 6 April 2024, so the right to request flexible working applies from an employee's first day. They can also make two statutory requests in any rolling 12-month period rather than one, and you have two months to decide each rather than three. In practice this means the conversation can now arrive during probation, which catches small employers out — a request made in week two is a valid statutory request and gets the same process as any other. It doesn't stop you ending a probation for genuine performance reasons, but doing so shortly after a request is exactly the sequence that looks bad and invites a claim, so document the performance concerns separately and contemporaneously.
Do I have to agree to a permanent change, or can I trial it?
You can trial it, and for anything you're genuinely unsure about a trial beats a refusal. Agree a fixed period — six or eight weeks is typical — set the review date before it starts, and write down exactly what you'll be reviewing and against what: whether cover held, whether a named busy period was still handled, whether response times slipped. Be explicit about whether the arrangement reverts automatically at the end unless confirmed, or continues unless ended, because that ambiguity is how a trial becomes an accidental permanent change. A trial gives you evidence instead of a guess, and if it genuinely doesn't work you end up with a documented business reason no tribunal is going to argue with.
Is any of this about to change?
Yes. The Employment Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent in December 2025 and its flexible working provisions are expected to take effect from 2027. The change is that naming one of the eight grounds will no longer be enough on its own: it will have to be reasonable for you to consider that the ground applies, and you will have to explain to the employee why the refusal is reasonable. A mandatory consultation process will be set out in secondary legislation, and the Government consulted on the detail between February and April 2026. Nothing has changed yet, but the direction is clear enough that the habit worth building now is writing down a real, specific, evidenced reason every time you say no.
