I started working for a small (40ish employees) company as an accounts assistant a few months ago. This week I put in an (informal?) flexible working request - I currently do 38 hours per week consisting of 8 hours per day Monday-Thursday and 6 hours on a Friday and I requested a 36 hour week of 9 hours per day Monday-Thursday to allow me Fridays off.
I didn’t include my reasons in the email as I was expecting there to be some sort of discussion but today I received an email saying they wouldn’t be fulfilling my request because ‘the role of accounts assistant requires you to work the hours and days outlined in your contract’. I have a bit of an issue with this because there are 4 accounts assistants including me and we all do different hours, one is part time, one does around 30 hours and the other one does around 39 so clearly the role does allow for some flexibility.
When I interviewed for the job, I was told the job could be either part or full time and I was asked which one I wanted. We also talked about how I was looking to start studying for the AAT (bookkeeping/accounting qualifications - this is the reason I wanted the extra day off) and I was told they ‘would be happy to help’ with that.
One of the accounts assistants has Fridays off already but the other 2 work on Fridays so it’s not like I’m the only person that works on that day and there is nothing that specifically needs to be done on a Friday that can’t be done over the rest of the week.
I’m planning to discuss this further with my managers asap so any advice or input would be greatly appreciated.