The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is calling for more immediate action on extending the right to request flexible working to all employees.

The CIPD welcomes the start, from today, of the six-month process of consigning the Default Retirement Age (DRA) to the dustbin of history. However, it believes extending workers’ rights would nudge more organisations towards a culture that doesn’t treat flexible working as a women’s issue or a parent’s perk.

As a recent Government Impact Assessment shows the economic and business benefits of flexible working far outweigh the costs. The CIPD believes that the benefits of flexible working include higher levels of employee engagement, increased job satisfaction and the retention and attraction of diverse talent, including older workers.

The current right to request is available for parents, but it is not only this group who would like to work flexibly — three in 10 (28%) older workers would work longer if allowed to work flexibly, according to CIPD research.

Dianah Worman OBE, CIPD diversity adviser, says: “We’re all going to be working longer and businesses have a vested interest in making our time as flexible and productive as possible. Flexible working isn’t a women’s issue or a parents’ perk, it’s a business benefit and it’s time we treated it as such.”