- The Flexible Working Regulations 2024: what we're seeing in practice, six months on
- Neurodiversity Celebration Month: making your HR processes genuinely neuroinclusive
- Our new Inclusive Recruitment course is live on the TWIC portal
Flexible Working Regulations 2024: six months on
Since 6 April 2024, employees have had the right to request flexible working from their first day of employment. Employers must now respond within two months (down from three), consult with the employee before refusing, and employees can make two requests per 12-month period rather than one. The eight statutory grounds for refusal remain unchanged.
Six months on from the changes coming into force, a few patterns are emerging from the organisations we work with and the casework we're tracking.
The consultation requirement is catching employers out. Before April 2024, an employer could review a request and refuse in writing without any meeting. Now, consultation - meaning genuine dialogue with the employee before a decision is made - is a legal requirement before refusal. We've seen several situations where requests were refused without any meeting taking place. That is now a procedurally unlawful refusal, regardless of whether the ground for refusal was valid. If a claim is brought, the absence of consultation weakens the employer's position significantly.
The grounds for refusal are being used more - but they need to be applied carefully. "Detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand" and "inability to reorganise work among existing staff" remain the most commonly cited grounds. Employers are entitled to use them, but they must be applied to the specific request, not used as a blanket reason. A refusal that says "we need everyone in the office" without engaging with the individual's proposal - and consulting on it - is vulnerable to challenge.
Two requests per 12 months matters more than it sounds. If the first request is refused, the employee can make a second within the same year - potentially for a different arrangement. Organisations that refused initial requests without genuine consideration may find a second request coming quickly. The time to engage properly is the first one.
For a full breakdown of the changes and what your policy needs to reflect, see our detailed article: The Flexible Working Regulations 2024: Day-One Rights and What's Changed →
Neurodiversity Awareness Month: doing more than posting
April is Neurodiversity Celebration Month, and social media will be full of posts this week. That visibility matters - but we always ask the organisations we work with the harder question: what does it mean for your HR processes?
The evidence on neurodivergent employees is clear and troubling. People who identify as autistic, ADHD, dyslexic, dyspraxic, or with other neurodivergent profiles are disproportionately exiting organisations within the first two years of employment. In many cases, not because they lack the capability to do the job - they were hired because they were capable - but because the environment, the management style, and the processes around them were incompatible with how they work, and no one identified or addressed that.
Three questions worth asking your organisation this month:
- Does your reasonable adjustments process work for people who don't know they have a neurodivergent profile? If your process relies entirely on employees self-identifying and formally requesting support, it isn't working for the large number of people who are struggling without yet having a diagnosis - or who don't want to disclose.
- Do your job adverts and application processes inadvertently disadvantage neurodivergent candidates? Timed online tests, video applications, and group exercises all disproportionately disadvantage autistic and ADHD candidates. If you're not actively offering adjustments at application stage, you're filtering them out before interview.
- Are your managers trained to manage performance in a way that accounts for different working and communication styles? The most common management failure with neurodivergent employees is applying a single, neurotypical standard of working to everyone - and treating deviation from that standard as underperformance rather than difference.
Worth asking: If your reasonable adjustments process only works for people who self-identify and formally request support - it isn't working for the people who need it most.
Our new Inclusive Recruitment course is live
This month, we launch our new online course: Inclusive Recruitment. It's built for HR teams and hiring managers in UK organisations who want to audit and improve their hiring processes from the ground up.
The course covers:
- Writing job adverts that don't accidentally exclude disabled, neurodivergent, or underrepresented candidates
- Making your application process accessible across formats and platforms
- Designing and running structured interviews - the evidence base, the method, and the scoring rubric
- Reasonable adjustments in selection: what to offer, when to offer it, and how to document it
- Using hiring data to audit your funnel for bias - where candidates are dropping out, and why
It includes real worked examples, legal grounding under the Equality Act 2010, and practical templates you can use immediately. It's available now through the TWIC learning portal.
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