The government announced plans today to extend flexible working rights to all parents with children under the age of 16.

This will give an estimated extra 4.5 million parents the right to request flexible working hours. Under current rules the opportunity is limited to parents with children under the age of 6 or disabled.

Prime minister Gordon Brown confirmed the new measures on BBC Breakfast this morning:

“The right to request flexible working has been working for lots of people over the last few years. It is working for parents of young children and now it can apply to children under 16 where families need help to bring [them] up,” he said.

Business secretary John Hutton said the move could help employers get the best from the parents in their workforce.

He said: “It is important that employers retain control over deciding whether it suits their business to allow people to work flexibly, but extending the right to request to parents of older children will allow families to take priority when decisions are made.”

But leaders of small businesses may need some clarification about what the new measures mean for them. A new survey from the Orange SMS Business Jury has shown that smaller businesses are not clear on the meaning of flexible working.

Just over half of businesses surveyed believe flexible working means taking time off for working extra hours; nearly a third think it means working from home; just over one in ten think it means working remotely and 7% think it means working part-time.

The majority of respondents believe that an office is the most productive working environment with anxieties around productivity still proving to be the biggest challenge for small businesses.

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