Flexible work requests: what the manager decides, and what belongs to HR

A team member asks to work from home two days a week, or to start and finish earlier, or to compress their hours. A few years ago many managers would have handled that with a quick conversation. In Singapore, a formal request now sits inside a defined framework.

The Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests, which have applied since December 2024, expect employers to have a process through which employees can make formal requests, to consider those requests properly, and to give their decision in writing. They do not oblige an employer to say yes.

This article is not a legal guide; the current text, the time limits and the paperwork are for your HR function. It is about the part of the process that usually lands on the line manager’s desk: deciding whether the work can actually be done that way.

Separate the process from the judgement

HR owns the process: how a request is submitted, how it is recorded, the deadlines, the written reply. The manager is usually the person best placed to answer the question in the middle of it — and the person most likely to answer it badly, because it arrives mixed up with everything else they think about the employee.

Keeping those two apart is the first discipline. A request is not a vote of confidence, and a refusal is not a verdict on someone’s commitment.

Judge the work, not the person

The useful questions are about the job:

• Which parts of the work need a particular place or time? Client meetings in person, a production line, a counter that has to be staffed, a daily hand-over with another time zone.
• Which parts do not? Analysis, writing, preparation, most internal coordination.
• What would the arrangement change for colleagues — cover, response times, who picks up the phone?
• How would we know if it is working?

The question to avoid is the one many managers ask silently: will this person still work as hard? A decision based on that belief is hard to defend, and it damages the relationship whether the answer is yes or no.

Make results visible first

Most of the difficulty in granting flexibility comes from not knowing what “doing the job well” looks like beyond being seen at a desk. A manager who has already set clear objectives, measured by results rather than presence, finds these requests far easier: they can grant them with confidence, review them honestly, and adjust them without it becoming personal. Setting that kind of frame is part of the core manager-leader toolkit.

Every decision is a precedent

The first request in a team is never only about one person. Whatever you decide becomes the reference point for the next request, and the rest of the team is watching for consistency.

State the criteria you are using — the requirements of the role, the needs of cover, the client commitments — and apply them the same way to the next person. And look after the colleagues who did not ask: flexibility granted to some must not quietly become extra load for the others.

Try it, then review it

Where the answer is not obvious, a trial period with a fixed review date is usually better than a hard yes or no. Agree what will be looked at — deadlines met, client response times, the team’s workload — and look at it together on the date. If it works, it continues on evidence. If it does not, the conversation is about the arrangement, not about the person.

That review is itself a feedback conversation, and it goes better with a method; Self-awareness and positive communication covers one. Running the arrangement day to day — rules, rituals, one-to-ones at a distance — builds on the one-to-one practice in The manager-leader toolkit.