News

January 2010

The Right to Request Time to Train

From the 6th April 2010 eleven million employees will have a new right to request time to train.

This right will work by giving employees a legal right to ask their employer to give them time away from their normal duties to undertake training that they believe will improve their performance and that of the business.

Employees in businesses who employ 250 or more people will have the right to request time to train.

Only employees who have worked for their employer for 26 weeks will be eligible to make a request. The right will be extended in April 2011 to cover employees in businesses of all sizes.

Under the new right employees will be able to make requests for time to undertake any training that they think will help them to be more productive and effective at work and this will help employers improve the productivity and performance of their business. This could mean employees making a request to undertake training that leads to the award of a nationally recognised qualification such as an NVQ or it could be to undertake unaccredited and perhaps shorter training that will help them develop particular skills like how to use a new piece of software.

An employer will be expected to consider all valid requests using processes similar to those used to consider a request for flexible working.

As with the existing right to request flexible working an employer will be able to turn down a request where they have a sound business reason to do so. An employer will also be able to turn down requests where they do not believe that the training their employee has requested will help improve business performance.