Flexible working policies for medical staff (FOI)

Request

A

How many public health shift staff are currently working under the terms of the flexibly working policy?

B

How many applications have been made to vary shift patterns from 1 January 2023 to 7 September 2023?

C

How many applications have been refused in this period?

Please, if possible, can the numbers in all three cases be split into types of roles and grade of worker, if not, can they be broken down into broad groups, such as nurse, theatre nurse, midwife, mental health nurse?

Response

There are currently 55 shift-working clinical staff working under the terms of the Flexible Working Policy in Health and Community Services (HCS).

Flexible working arrangements are agreed at ward or care area level, and the staffing needs within those areas. The table below shows the breakdown of formal applications made in line with the Flexible Working Policy, according to Care Group or Directorate:

Owing to small numbers of formal applications in some areas and staff groups, providing a breakdown of applications by staff group or role type, and the outcome of these applications – whether agreed or declined, could identify individuals and impact upon their privacy. Therefore, Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied to protect individuals’ personal employment information.

Across HCS, two formal requests for flexible working are pending, and three requests for flexible working could not be accommodated.

The majority of flexible working arrangements within HCS will be informal, as described on www.gov.je. Shift rosters are completed weeks in advance, giving employees opportunity to request specific shifts on an ad-hoc basis to manage work and life commitments. Short-term flexible working may also be agreed informally for time periods to support employee health, as required. Please see the following link: 

Flexible working policy for public servants (gov.je) 

Managers are encouraged to effectively communicate with their staff to ensure they can try to accommodate and approve requests for flexible working wherever possible, with regular reviews of any formal arrangements to ensure these remain appropriate for the staff member.

Article applied

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.