‘Right to Request Training’ - Apprenticeships, Skills, Learning and Children Bill set to receive Royal Assent

Monday 09 November 2009Comment on this article Permlink

Business Link

The bill offering employees the right to request time off for training is set to receive Royal Assent.

The new law would work by allowing employees to request time to undertake accredited programmes leading to a qualification or unaccredited training to help them develop a specific skill that is relevant to their job.

The right to request time off for training will be similar in procedure to that already in place for making and responding to requests for flexible working.

It will apply to employees with more than 26 weeks continuous employment, which is intended to ensure that the right only covers employees with whom employers have developed a working relationship.

The right will also extend to volunteers who are deemed to be ‘employees’.

Employers will need to ensure they have in place the appropriate policy to advise employees of their rights, and the procedure that they need to go through to make such a request.

Employers must give serious consideration to each request they receive.

However, they are under no obligation to grant a request if there is a good business reason not to do so.

Neither are they obliged to pay an employee’s salary while they are undertaking training or required to organise or pay for the training.

But it is expected that many will choose to do so, recognising the opportunity to improve their business by investing in the skills of their employees.

Reasons for not considering a request are:

In line with the current legislation regarding flexible working requests, the government is proposing that employees will only be able to make one request in any 12-month period.

The new right will apply to businesses with 250 employees or more from April 2010, and will be extended to all businesses from April 2011.

Employers will be able to access detailed guidance in January 2010 through Business Link.

One of the first questions most employers will be concerned about is the cost of any such training requests.

The proposed legislation will not require employers to pay for the training, but many may choose to do so if it will benefit their business.

The legislation is merely going to oblige the employer to “seriously consider” any request from employees for time off work to improve their job skills.

Unusually, there are two proposed levels of appeal.

First, as is usual, an appeal can be made internally within the organisation, but the second level will be to an employment tribunal.

This is going to be a limited right of appeal but will relate to situations where an employer has failed to follow the correct procedure, for example.

The tribunal will have the right to require employers to reconsider the application, which will involve additional management time and employees may be awarded compensation within defined limits.

Such measures are no doubt intended to encourage employers to ensure that they follow the specified procedure and that requests are only rejected on a proper basis.

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