As a company we do not offer ''Flexi-working" as an option (i.e some companies may say employees can start and finish at a chosen time each day, providing they do their hours) but we don't, as it doesn't work for our business. We made changes to other areas as a compromise (allowing people to book holiday in hours rather than days, so that they can use minimal holiday to go to a class, or football practice etc rather than losing half a days holiday.
Obviously, this does not prevent an employee putting in a standard 'Flexible Working' request.
We have had 1 employee put in a formal Flexible Working request (a particularly difficult employee who already has way over the norm in flexibility - she's allowed to work from home more than others, allowed to bring her dog in occassionally etc). She wants to go to a fitness class on a Friday morning (our Fridays are already short, we do 8:30am - 1pm, it was a perk introduced a while ago whilst keeping people on their full time pay and has become a permanent change). She wants to start work at 9:30 on the Friday, and make up the lost time during the week. Part of our reasoning for shortening Fridays was for work/life balance already. A full time week here is 36.5 hours, or if she is on target, 32.5 hours per week as she would get to finish at 4pm Mon-Thurs.
We are inclined to say no, she is under-performing, the first hour of the day is the most critical in terms of getting hold of candidates (we are a recruitment agency), and it falls into the realms of something that has been discussed before, it would then not stop others doing the same thing (I know we judge each individually, but it would cause a detriment to morale if we then started refusing requests for essentially the same thing). There are other options with the fitness class, they do it on a Monday before work, or a Tuesday evening after work, but she is adamant she must go to the one during work time on a Friday morning. It's a different teacher I believe, but same location, same class.
Are we unreasonable to say no?! I am cautious that there needs to be good business reason, so thought I would see what the general thoughts are... I've been going round in circles with it!
