Flexible working should be a day-one right say MPs

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All roles should be advertised as flexible unless there is a strong and continuing business reason otherwise, a committee of MPs has concluded in a report on the gender pay gap. The Gender Pay Gap report said that Government is complicit in a system that perpetuates the gender pay gap, and that it will persist without a change in policy. The right to request flexible working is currently only available to employees after 26 weeks, but the committee heard evidence that women have to “trade down” and take lower paid roles that offer the flexibility they require, with “nearly half of women working in part-time work over-qualified for their job”. Giving evidence to the committee, the skills minister Nick Boles said “If you have half a brain cell as an employer, you realise that by offering flexibility you can often get better applicants. It does not need me to regulate it.” But the authors of the report disagreed: “The benefits of flexibility are fully accepted by Government, yet policies encouraging employers to create more opportunities for flexible working are not forthcoming. “By refusing to act, the Go