The Department of Labour have released a report on the impact of the legislative changes made in 2008 that enabled greater flexibility for people with caring responsibilities.

Among the main findings:

• A majority of employee-reported requests for flexibility were accepted by employers without recourse to the formal legal process.
• Interestingly, the level of awareness of flexible work legislation is relatively low, at 27.5% of employers and 19.8% of employees.
• Overall, 70% of employers report having some or all of their employees working flexibly. The remaining 30% of employers reported that they did not have any employees working flexibly.
• Among employers who had flexible work arrangements of some form, 86.9% said that they have a positive impact, citing business reasons such as improving productivity, staff retention and recruitment and morale.
• Larger employers were much more likely to have none or only a small proportion of staff working flexibly and small firms were much more likely to have all staff working flexibly.
• Among employers who have some or all of their staff working flexibly, 76.1% reported they incurred no costs. Of those employers who said they incur some costs associated with flexible work arrangements, a majority said that these costs were reasonable.

Download the report here