Ending the two-tier workforce

Access to part-time and flexible working is highly valued and far more easily available to those in office based and higher earning jobs. Site-based and shift-based workers, such as medical staff, transport workers, nurses, cleaners, retail assistants and construction workers, who all make up our everyday economy, typically have little or no flexibility in their roles, resulting in a ‘two-tier workforce’.

In partnership with abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, we set out to understand the potential for improving access to quality flexible work in four sectors that have a high proportion of shift and site-based work. Our research focused on frontline employees’ autonomy and control over the hours they work, and when and where they work, in health and care, retail, construction, and transport and logistics. We chose to focus on these sectors for the following reasons:

• they each have high levels of shift-based and site-based work
• they have between 13% to 49% of workers who are low paid
• they have between 11% to 29% of workers on an insecure contract or volatile hours

These four industries make up more than a third of UK employee jobs, so provided a representative test of whether and how the new legislation will improve work-life balance for site-based and shift-based workers.

What did we do?

We engaged with employers, workers, experts and sector representatives over 12 months, starting with in-depth industry research. This included a review of literature and interviews with HR and senior operational leads across the four sectors.

This was to understand:

• their response to legislation relating to workers’ rights
• their workforce demands for flexible and secure working patterns
• their approach to implementing flexible and secure work for their frontline staff including their operational challenges and opportunities for greater impact across their organisation and sector

Then we further tested and refined our findings with sector stakeholders to develop practical strategies to increase the adoption of flexible and secure work in their industries, taking into account the impact for employers, sector bodies and government.

We did this through a number of roundtable discussions with employers, trade unions and sector bodies, chaired by sector leaders including Danny Mortimer, Chief Executive of NHS Employers; Helen Dickinson OBE, Chief Executive of the British Retail Consortium; Kim Sides, Executive Director of BAM Construction; and Kevin Green, Chief People Officer at First Bus and Timewise Chair, as well as focus groups with lower-income workers in site-based roles.

Our findings

It was clear that a different set of principles and ways of talking about how work is designed is needed to encourage frontline employers to be able to change the way that rosters and shift patterns are created. Our ‘Shift-Life Balance Model’ recognises that it’s key to understand the size and volume of work first of all, then consider employees’ input into their schedule, fair notice of shift patterns as well as regular work patterns.

A common vision for secure and flexible work in frontline sectors
Our engagement with employers, sector bodies and workers revealed that, with the right sectoral strategies, incentives and support, is it possible to implement flexible and secure work in frontline sectors of the economy. Insights from the industry panels suggested three building blocks for making progress on this good practice vision:

1. Resetting the narrative around flexible and predictable work – a key starting point is to shift industry perceptions and understandings of what flexible and predictable work actually is.

2. Testing and trialling new practice and sharing learning – challenging existing practice with data-led evidence, pilots and exploring how wider factors can enable access to flexible work.

3. Shifting cultures and systems towards flexible working as the default – setting flexibility as the ‘default’ across an entire business requires longer term shifts in culture, processes and systems.

Challenges

Whilst there are a few examples of excellent practice, there is still a long way to go to establish secure and flexible working cultures more broadly. Workers are concerned about flexibility that favours employers, but doesn’t give them any input, control or security themselves.

Our research revealed some complex barriers to realising flexible and predictable working models, including:

• Operational and capacity constraints
• Lack of sectoral coordination and collective action
• Resistance to cultural and management change

The core challenge is to drive the good practice by a small number of individual organisations towards a more cross-sector approach, mainstreaming predictable and flexible working cultures across industries.

Policy implications and recommendations

Our research has shown that a stronger statutory framework alone will not produce the workplace culture, business and operational shifts needed to tackle ‘one-sided flexibility’ in favour of employers, particularly for those in shift or site-based roles in frontline sectors. We have identified two key weaknesses (detailed in the report) and believe that a sector-based approach is essential for real change to take place.

We have established a coalition of leading employers, sector bodies and union representatives who are calling for government to work in partnership with industry and workers to ensure legislative proposals in the Employment Rights Bill can be successfully implemented.

This is urgently needed to give workers in the ‘everyday economy’ greater control and predictability and to realise the government’s wider goals on workforce participation, reducing economic inactivity and achieving inclusive economic growth.

Sector Guides

Four ‘sector guides’ are published alongside this report offering sector-specific recommendations for employers and sector bodies on improving access to flexible and predictable work for frontline employees.

Published January 2025