Are your managers making flexible working decisions that could cost you at tribunal?
The Challenge
The Employment Rights Act 2025 makes flexible working a statutory right from day one of employment. The grounds on which employers can refuse a request have been narrowed. The duty to consider alternatives before refusing has been strengthened. And managers who decline requests on instinct “it doesn’t work for the team” are now exposing your organisation to indirect discrimination claims with uncapped compensation. Most flexible working disputes are not caused by bad intentions. They are caused by managers who didn’t know the rules had changed.
The Solution
BFI’s in-house programme gives your managers a clear, practical process for handling every stage of a flexible working request from the first conversation through to a documented, defensible decision. We also cover the ERA 2025’s significant changes to family leave: neonatal care leave, enhanced paternity rights and extended redundancy protections for employees on family leave. Your managers leave knowing what the law requires, what they can and cannot do, and how to handle the situations that are most likely to go wrong.
Course Overview
Why bring this training in-house?
- Compliance: Ensure every flexible working decision follows a process that meets the ERA 2025 requirements and withstands equality scrutiny.
- Confidence: Give managers a clear decision-making framework so they can handle requests consistently and without anxiety.
- Risk reduction: Address the indirect discrimination exposure embedded in ad-hoc flexible working decisions before it reaches tribunal.
- Policy refresh: Equip your HR team and managers to implement updated flexible working and family leave policies confidently.
Learning objectives:
Flexible working requests look different in a logistics operation, a hospital ward, a retail environment and a professional services firm. This programme is tailored to the types of requests your managers actually receive, the operational constraints they work within, and the family leave situations most likely to arise in your workforce. Content is calibrated to your existing policies and adapted to surface the specific scenarios your managers find hardest to navigate.
In-house delivery gives your organisation:
- Scenarios drawn from the flexible working requests and family leave situations most common in your sector
- Content aligned to your updated flexible working policy and ERA 2025 family leave entitlements
- A confidential space to work through the requests and situations managers are currently unsure how to handle
- A consistent approach to flexible working decisions across your entire management population
Key training topics:
The programme is structured across five modules, tailored to the flexible working and family leave situations most relevant to your organisation.
Module 1 The New Flexible Working Framework Day-One Rights, Grounds for Refusal, and the Duty to Consider Alternatives
Module 2 Equality and Indirect Discrimination Identifying and Managing the Risk in Flexible Working Decisions
Module 3 Family Leave Under the ERA 2025 Neonatal Care Leave, Enhanced Paternity Rights, and Extended Redundancy Protections
Module 4 Managing the Process Requests, Decisions, Documentation and Communication
Module 5 Practical Scenarios and Manager Skills Workshop
By the end of this training your team will be able to:
- Explain the new day-one right to flexible working, the permissible grounds for refusal, and the duty to consider alternatives
- Handle a flexible working request correctly from initial conversation through to documented decision
- Identify the indirect discrimination risk in a proposed refusal and test decisions for equality exposure before making them
- Describe the new neonatal care leave entitlement, enhanced paternity rights and extended family leave redundancy protections
- Support employees returning from family leave, including managing phased returns and reasonable adjustments
- Apply a consistent, documented approach to flexible working and family leave decisions with confidence
Who will benefit from attendance:
This programme is for everyone who receives, assesses or makes decisions on flexible working requests, or who manages employees through family leave and return to work.
This course is designed for:
- Line managers and team leaders, who receive flexible working requests and feel uncertain about what they can and cannot say, or who are anxious about getting the equality aspects wrong.
- People managers and operational leaders, who manage employees on or returning from family leave and want a clear, confident process for handling the situations that arise.
- HR business partners, who coach managers through flexible working and family leave decisions and need to update their own knowledge under the ERA 2025.
- HR managers and heads of HR, who are refreshing flexible working and family leave policies under the ERA 2025 and need a thorough grounding in the new entitlements.
- Diversity, equity and inclusion leads, who are concerned about the equality exposure embedded in inconsistent flexible working decision-making across the organisation.
- Payroll and reward managers, who need to understand the new neonatal care leave and paternity entitlements and their payroll implications.
This course is particularly valuable ahead of a flexible working policy refresh, following an ERA 2025 management communications programme, or for organisations where flexible working requests are handled inconsistently across different teams or sites.
Contact Details
Catherine Ouston,
Head of In-House Training
📥 teamtraining@bfi.co.uk
📞 +44(0)1983 861133
