This year’s Flexible Jobs Index shows that just 30% of jobs are advertised as flexible, and 12% as part-time, despite these roles being in high demand. In a tight labour market, that’s a big mistake.
By Nicola Smith, Director of Development and Innovation
This year’s Flexible Jobs Index is being published at a time of great economic uncertainty. In the seven years since we began our annual tracking of the flexible jobs market, we’ve never seen anything like it.
The cost of living crisis is biting hard, with those not in work the worse hit, and an estimated 3.7 million people struggling in insecure work and low pay. And new figures released today show that there are four people chasing every part-time job. Yet, business leaders across all sectors are finding it hard to recruit the people they need, with vacancies remaining at record highs. Even though the country is now in recession, unemployment is still predicted to remain lower than in other recent downturns, and forecasters expect businesses will continue to struggle to recruit.
Clearly, then, offering more flexible jobs – and specifically, more part-time jobs – would help employers to fill their skills gaps. So are we seeing an increase in the number of employers advertising their roles in this way? Disappointingly, the answer from this year’s Index is ‘not really.’
Looked at as a whole, the picture is of minimal growth. Despite a real shift in attitudes towards flexible working during the pandemic, still only 30% of jobs are advertised with any kind of flexibility (up from 26% last year).
Crucially, we are only talking about secure permanent employment here. Highly insecure roles such as zero hours contracts and gig economy self-employed roles can provide high levels of flexibility for employers but little autonomy or control for workers, so we do not include them in our analysis.
So while 9 in 10 people want to work flexibly, and 5 in 10 currently do, only 3 in 10 permanent jobs are advertised as such.
The Index also demonstrates why the demand for part-time jobs is so high – just 12% of jobs are advertised as less than full-time. And it’s not just employers who are missing out as a result. The lack of part-time jobs means that people who can’t work full-time – including parents, carers and many people with mental and physical health conditions – are locked out of the workplace.
Furthermore, the Index tells a ‘Tale of Two Flexes’, with roles advertised as part-time lurking towards the bottom of the pay scale, and hybrid roles tending to be offered at higher salary levels. This is important. We have a good supply of low-paid part-time work – what we don’t have is decent part-time jobs higher up the pay scale. And in some better paid sectors that are really struggling to fill their vacancies – such as manufacturing and construction – the proportion of jobs advertised as flexible remains particularly low.
So why are employers failing to advertise flexible roles, when doing so would help them overcome their recruitment challenges? Our new report, created in partnership with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, with analysis from the Institute of Employment Studies, seeks to answer that question.
We interviewed 1,000 senior decision makers from a mix of SMEs and large firms, and followed up with qualitative interviews. Three core themes emerged – none of which, in our view, should be a barrier:
However, these reasons are no longer good enough. It’s now well accepted that offering flexible working up front can help employers gain an edge in the fight for talent, which is all the more critical given current vacancy rates. And with the cost of living already unmanageably high, helping people who can’t work full-time access paid work is not just a practical solution, but a social imperative.
The medium to long-term outlook remains challenging; our jobs market is facing a triple whammy of higher rates of long-term ill health, falling birth rates and post-Brexit restrictions. It seems there will continue to be fewer candidates than we need for some time to come. This is a problem that isn’t going away any time soon; employers who want to attract talented staff can’t afford to keep recruiting in the way they always have.
That means accepting that the old, less flexible ways of working won’t cut it any longer. Investing time and money in exploring how flexible working could benefit their organisations. And creating cultures where employees are trusted to deliver, part-time and flexible workers are valued and championed, and managers are trained to support them.
It will be time and money well spent, even just in terms of the bottom line; as we’ve shown, there’s a financial return on investment in flexible working. And as Bruce Daisley has noted, “Flex is the new salary”, so offering it will also help employers overcome recruitment challenges, widening the candidate talent pool and helping attract the best candidates. Not sure where to start? We can help.
