Flexible working requests from SIA staff, June 2017 to June 2022
Published 12 July 2022
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1. Request
You are offering flexible working for your staff and guarantee equal treatment no matter which gender or race/ethnic group, in line with employers in other industries and government organisations.
On that note, I require the following information from you:
- Total number of flexible working requests in the last 5 years (June 2017 to June 2022).
- How many of the requests were granted (please state how many were received in each year in total and how many of those were granted)?
- How many of the granted requests were from male and female staff members?
- How many of these granted ones were from staff from ethnic minorities and how many were from white British staff members?
- How many of the total requests in each year were processed within the required 3 months timescale?
- If requests were processed delayed, what was the primary reason for the out-of-time processing?
2. Response
I can confirm that the SIA does not hold the information that you have requested. The SIA offers flexible working for all staff and everyone is treated fairly regardless of their gender or ethnic group.
There have been a significant number of flexible working requests from June 2017 to June 2022 but each case is dealt with on its own merits, and then not tracked, so if for example an individual changed to working compressed hours, or reduced their hours this is not recorded anywhere, other than the written confirmation of the change.
As we do not hold this information, this would result in creating new information which under FOI guidance we should not do.
We are unable to advise on the total number of flexible working requests from June 2017 to June 2022, nor how many of these requests were granted, the gender break down of the individuals making these requests or their ethnicity. As we do not hold any of this information, we do not hold the total number of requests processed within a 3 month timescale, nor ones that were not (if any) and the reasons for this.
We are in the process of overhauling our processes and having this information readily available in the future.
[Reference: FOI 0347]