{"id":497,"date":"2026-08-02T08:48:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T08:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/?p=497"},"modified":"2026-08-02T08:51:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T08:51:26","slug":"balancing-caring-responsibilities-and-your-right-to-request-flexible-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/08\/02\/balancing-caring-responsibilities-and-your-right-to-request-flexible-working\/","title":{"rendered":"Balancing Caring Responsibilities, and your Right to Request Flexible Working"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With the summer holidays now underway, are you finding it difficult to balance work, and home commitments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A recent study by Deloitte UK found that 64% of mothers feel overwhelmed, with 66% experiencing burnout due to a lack of personal time.&nbsp; This compared to 38% of fathers feeling overwhelmed, and 47% experiencing burnout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With school holidays totalling around 13 weeks per year in the UK, compared with 5.6 weeks of annual leave, many families struggle to balance childcare responsibilities with work, especially during the school holidays.&nbsp; 1 in 4 parents reported to using 13 days of annual leave per year to carry out caring responsibilities, including ill children, school events, school closures and other responsibilities. On average, they take between 1-3 days off for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Where you may be struggling to balance your home commitments, this inevitably has an effect on your productivity at work.&nbsp; You may experience increased absence or lateness, need to request emergency or dependants leave, or fatigue and other physical symptoms which affect your performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This of course doesn\u2019t only affect those caring for children. Increasing numbers of adults now have caring responsibilities for older relatives, or parents. The \u201csandwich carers\u201d who are in between younger and older generations requiring care often put their own self-care and needs at the bottom of the list of priorities. Increasingly this has a detrimental effect on mental health and wellbeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With flexible working now a day one right, many individuals are using this right to ask for increased flexibility. Businesses are becoming more conscious of looking at how they can support staff, to not only achieve a better work-life balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another recent survey has found that 600 carers in the UK leave work every day due to being unable to balance their work, and home, responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Flexible Working Requests<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you need to request flexible working, this can be for any reason (not just caring), and there is a process your employer must follow to consider the request. There are only certain reasons that requests can be declined for &#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>the burden of additional costs<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>an inability to reorganise work amongst existing staff<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>an inability to recruit additional staff<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>a detrimental impact on quality<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>a detrimental impact on performance<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>a detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>insufficient work available for the periods the employee proposes to work<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>planned structural changes to the employer&#8217;s business&#8217;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you would like to share your experience of requesting flexible working, or balancing caring and work, please email me at tracey@cvprime.co.uk<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the summer holidays now underway, are you finding it difficult to balance work, and home commitments? A recent study by Deloitte UK found that 64% of mothers feel overwhelmed, with 66% experiencing burnout due<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":499,"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvprime.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}