Flexible working is here to stay. But in some sectors, with specific operational barriers, delivering Good Flexible Work is a huge challenge, and frontline employees are being left behind. Here’s how the Timewise Innovation Unit will break down these barriers and make flex work for everyone.
By Emma Stewart MBE, Co-Founder
As someone who’s been campaigning for flexible working for 15 years, I’m delighted that the concept has finally landed. From government leaders and policymakers to industry bodies and social campaigners, the message is clear; the days of the standard 9 to 5 working week are over. People want to work flexibly, and when it’s done properly, employers benefit as much as employees. End of.
So having won the argument for why we need flex, the focus needs to be on the how. That means making sure that two-way flexibility – Good Flexible Work that delivers for both employers and employees – is available for everyone who wants it.
In some sectors and roles, this principle is well understood, and flexible roles have followed. But if we don’t tackle it across the board, we’ll end up with a two-tier flexible system, which fails to deliver for people in critical front-line jobs. And that, in a nutshell, is why we’re launching the Timewise Innovation Unit, our new do-tank for creating flexible solutions in hard-to-crack sectors.
The problem is that, while some sectors are easier to flexify, others have specific operational barriers which are a real challenge to overcome. For example, we know exactly what needs to be done to make office-based jobs more flexible, and we offer consultancy and training on that basis. But a sector like teaching, with a more rigid timeframe, is a different story; it’s hard to flex your start time when class 8E are expecting you for their 9am lesson.
Then there are other sectors in which employees may appear to be working flexibly – nurses, warehouse workers – but in reality have no control over when and where they work. And still others, such as retail or hospitality, in which flexibility may be available, but only at the lower end of the scale. Flexibility in these sectors tends to be designed to suit customers rather than employees, and moving into a better, more senior role just isn’t an option on a part-time basis.
By Karen Mattison MBE, Co-Founder
Here at Timewise, we are known for our robust research into the headline issues around part-time and flexible working. Our findings around who wants to flex, and the impact of doing so on pay and progression, are widely quoted and are helping to drive mindset and culture change all over the UK.
So when we heard anecdotal evidence that part-time employees feel they are missing out on opportunities because they aren’t treated as full members of the team, we considered that this too was worth investigating. While it may sound like a softer issue, we suspected that it could have a serious impact, not just on part-timers’ wellbeing, but also their ability to deliver their roles successfully, and therefore on business performance.
The resulting research, and subsequent report, Part-Time Work: The Exclusion Zone? shows that we were right to be concerned. Amongst the headline findings are that two-thirds of part-timers feel isolated at work and struggle to make connections, and a similar number feel less up-to-date with team developments. More than half also feel they have fallen behind their full-time colleagues in terms of skills and knowledge.
And while that’s not great for the employees themselves, it also has implications for employers, who are failing to capitalise on the talent and potential that their part-time workers have to offer. Which, as we know only too well, can create extra challenges around issues such as board diversity and the gender pay gap.
The good news is that this workplace ‘flexism’ can be tackled relatively easily. Simply by taking part-time schedules into account when planning team meetings, client events and social opportunities, employers stand to maximise the impact that these employers can have on the business.
They’ll also be better placed to upskill and progress their part-time workers by considering them more carefully when planning training and other development opportunities. And inevitably, that will allow them to hold onto these talented employees for longer.
We’re responding to this research ourselves, by launching the Timewise PowerFlex Network, the UK’s first-ever cross-business network to support middle and senior management part-time and flexible workers.
Designed to offer a dynamic mix of networking opportunities, inspirational speakers and bespoke training, it will be scheduled to help part-time and flexible workers enjoy the kind of opportunities that their full-time colleagues take for granted. If you’d be interested in hosting an event, or would like to know more, do please get in touch.
Part-time workers don’t expect the world to revolve around them. As their responses made clear, they fully accept that they can’t be present for every single meeting or event, and that there are times when they will need to be flexible in return.
But given that 9 in 10 employees say they would prefer to work part-time or flexibly, there’s no room for flexism in today’s workplace. This issue needs to be addressed if employers are to reap the rewards of an increasingly flexible workforce; if you need any support, we’ll be happy to help.
Published December 2018
By Emma Stewart, Co-Founder
In October last year, as part of the discussion around the gender pay gap, the Prime Minister called on employers to make flexible working a reality for all employees. Her proposal, which we have long been lobbying for, is that companies should advertise jobs as flexible from day one, unless there are solid business reasons not to.
Following this call, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (DBEIS) has established a new Flexible Working Taskforce, chaired by the CIPD. It brings together representatives from government, employee groups, employer organisations and other professional bodies, and I am delighted to have been asked to join it.
Over the next 18 months, the taskforce will be investigating the barriers that prevent employers from offering, and individuals from taking up, flexible working options. It will also identify positive actions to overcome these barriers. This is a fantastic opportunity to drive real change, with government input and investment behind us.
I have already presented an insight session on flexible hiring to my fellow taskforce members, in collaboration with Lloyds Banking Group, sharing what works and how it works. And I am looking forward to incorporating the Timewise perspective further, as we review the employee life course from recruitment to retention to progression. Our aim is to develop tangible recommendations that will encourage and support more businesses to embrace both flexible working and flexible hiring.
It’s an exciting time for those of us in the flexible working sphere. As I’m sure you’d expect from Timewise, we’re grabbing the opportunity and making it count. We’ll let you know any developments as they arise.
Published July 2018
As the NHS reaches its 70th birthday, the workforce challenges it is facing are well publicised. It is harder than ever for the organisation to attract and retain talented people, and the resulting vacancy levels are compounding workload and stress levels for those who remain.
Here at Timewise, we know that one of the key tools for attracting and retaining talent is offering a level of flexibility. Today, 9 out of 10 employees want to work flexibly or part-time. And the importance of flexibility is starting to land with NHS policy makers, too.
In a recent speech on the future of the NHS, the Prime Minister commented that “working practices in the NHS have not caught up with modern lifestyles…we must also take better care of staff and offer greater flexibility over where they work, when they work and what they can do.”
Clearly, implementing flexible working in a 24-hour organisation like the NHS is not straightforward. With different specialisms and departments having such different operational needs, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. So, drawing on our advisory work with five NHS Trusts and supported by the NHS Leadership Academy and NHS London Women’s Network, we have investigated the challenges, opportunities and areas for action.
The resulting report, Flexible Working in the NHS: The Case for Action, captures the key business case for flexible working in the NHS, provides some case studies to highlight new approaches, and sets out a clear action plan for the next steps that would achieve fundamental change in approach.
As the report shows, NHS staff who wish to work flexibly are often treated as an inconvenience, due to needing something different which managers have to accommodate. The cultural expectation that NHS employees will be 100% committed to their roles also makes it hard for people who need to work less, or only work at certain times.
So, if the NHS is to overcome its staffing issues, there needs to be a mindset change. Rather than treating flexible working as a favour for people with caring responsibilities, leaders should view it as a valuable workforce tool. Why? Because giving more people greater control over when and how much they work will lead to greater engagement, improved wellbeing and increased productivity. And of course, it will make it easier for NHS Trusts to find and keep the staff they need.
As the NHS celebrates its past, and looks ahead to the future, we believe that flexible working has a key role to play in addressing its workforce challenges. By prioritising flexible job design and creating a culture that supports flexibility from the top down, NHS leaders will be far better placed to deliver a health service that is future fit.
Download full report - Flexible Working in the NHS: the Case for Action
To find out how Timewise could support your organisation, please email info@timewise.co.uk
Published July 2018
After spending eight months working with nurses on three wards at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital (BWCH) to pilot team-based rostering, we’re now able to describe what we’ve learned and, importantly, report on nurses’ satisfaction with the changes. We’re also applying these learnings to two further pilots, at Nottingham University Hospital (NUH) and University Hospital Southampton (UHS).
Here are some key points:
As we have explored previously, flexibility in nursing often means predictability – that is, the ability to work a more regular shift pattern, rather than being subject to the extremes of variability which are common in nursing. In general, such bespoke working arrangements have often been allocated on a request-response basis, usually for parents or people with other caring responsibilities.
One of the aims of our team-based rostering approach is to ensure that everyone, not just the carers in the team, can have a say in their working pattern. However, it’s hard to shift a long-held conviction that going to the gym, singing in a choir or just having a long weekend are less valid reasons for a bespoke working arrangement.
We are therefore incorporating discussion of this shift in mindset very early on in the training for the NUH and UHS pilots, and have already noted that this helps those staff who do not have childcare needs feel like they are as highly valued, and their priorities as important, as their colleagues with children.
Data from our mid-pilot survey at BWCH shows that the proportion of nurses who feel they have an input into the roster is moving gradually upwards, having gone from 60% to 66% in four months, while the proportion who felt they had insufficient input has reduced from 20% to 9%. Furthermore, the proportion who feel that they understand their colleagues’ work-life balance needs has gone from 58% to 70%.
The BWCH pilot has also begun to address the issue of long-standing fixed working arrangements, which can have a negative impact on everyone else. For example, an employee who was given Fridays off for childcare reasons – whether formally or informally – may no longer have the same needs, but may have continued with this arrangement.
Understandably, these employees are loath to lose an arrangement which works well for them, but this can be incompatible with a team-based approach. There needs to be a recognition of the needs of the team as a whole, and a negotiation that is fair to everyone, rather than some nurses acquiring a special ‘accommodation’ by virtue of having asked first, or having a ‘better’ reason. Under our new system, 75% of the BWCH nurses now feel a collective responsibility for producing the roster.
Under the previous system, where nurses could make a small number of shift requests, but otherwise had their rosters imposed on them, there was frequent grumbling when people didn’t get what they had asked for, but also an acceptance that the system was not going to change.
Our new approach involves a ‘lead team’ of nurses (approximately one lead team member for every 6-8 nurses) asking staff about their preferences, then working more collectively to create the roster and fulfil as many of those preferences as possible.
However, some nurses’ expectations were raised to unrealistic levels, and they then tried to override the lead team members’ decisions, thereby undermining both the system and the sense of teamwork. Clearly, there needs to be an acceptance that, in a 24/7 environment, compromise is required, and that preferences are just that, preferences, not guarantees. And the role of the team leader in fostering this acceptance is critical.
The major change we’ve made to tackle this for our two new hospital pilots is to invest more time in identifying lead team members who have the right balance between being assertive and being caring. We’re also spending more time training them in how to deal with dissatisfied colleagues. This includes role-playing tricky conversations, articulating the kinds of problems that may come up, and even providing them with the right language to use – helpful phrases that capture the new approach.
One of the wards at BWCH got to grips with the concept of team-based rostering much more quickly than the other two. Becoming a lead team member means going up a rapid learning curve about how a roster is built, and what the constraints are – and some of them found the roster-building process uncongenial. So the more successful wards changed those lead team members who were not happy in the role at an early stage.
It’s vital that the lead team have the right skills and qualities to produce effective rosters and manage staff demands. So, for NUH and UHS, we have increased the time allocated to training the lead team on how to use the e-roster to manage operational challenges and clinical constraints (such as getting the right skills mix for every shift), so they can hit the ground running. Then, once the lead team is correctly staffed and up to speed, we are monitoring lead team members’ skills and comfort levels in the role, so that we can make changes if needed.
The new process is having a positive impact on nurses’ understanding of how a roster is built: the proportion of nurses at BWCH who say they understand the roster process has gone up from 65% to 85%, while the proportion who felt they did not understand the process has decreased from 35% to 15%.
We have also created an implementation guide, which includes a walk through the rostering process and the lead team members’ role in it, and a series of FAQs gleaned from our experience to date, so the teams have a source of information which they can refer to.
We are now working across seven wards, with a total of over 200 nurses, at our three hospitals. All three will continue to use the new process we’ve developed until the end of the pilot in March 2019. At this point, we will publish our final report and circulate our learnings to the sector as a whole.
In the meantime, while FlexAbility in Nursing has focused on one of the three cornerstones of designing flexible working for a shift based environment (input into scheduling) we are excited to be starting another, similarly ambitious pilot. This time we will be investigating how to tackle the variability of scheduling and its effect on individuals.
The project will explore whether a more predictable schedule will encourage more nurses to stay in the profession – and tackle the operational challenges of making that happen. We’re looking forward to getting started and will keep you informed of our progress.
Published June 2018
By Emma Stewart, Co-Founder
A 2018 report by the CIPD has suggested that presenteeism – that is, people struggling into work when they are ill – has more than tripled since 2010. Should employers be worried? After all, if people want to come in and get the work done, even if they’re feeling under the weather, isn’t that a bonus for business?
Not according to Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at the University of Manchester, who has stated that “workers coming in and doing nothing is more dangerous to the UK economy than absenteeism.” His comments drew on a previous CIPD survey, which revealed that employers who had noticed an increase in presenteeism were nearly twice as likely to report an increase in stress-related absence as those who hadn’t. They were also more than twice as likely to report an increase in mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.
As the CIPD’s Rachel Suff recently argued, “Increasingly, the threats to well-being in the modern workplace are psychological rather than physical, and yet too few organisations are discouraging unhealthy workplace practices and tackling stress, which is strongly linked to health conditions such as anxiety and depression.”
Here at Timewise, we believe that flexible working is the foundation for the healthy workplace practices Rachel is championing. It may sound obvious but it bears repeating; if people are able to improve their work-life balance by working flexibly, they will be less likely to feel they have to struggle in when they shouldn’t, or to suffer from stress and anxiety.
That might mean working from home to cut down the commute. Or it could mean flexing start and finish times to manage school pick-ups, or working part-time to create space to look after an aging relative. Our experience has shown that most roles can work on a flexible basis, even client facing ones. The critical success factor is that the roles need to be designed with flexibility built in.
Of course, supporting employee wellbeing isn’t just good for employees; healthy minds are likely to be more productive ones, so it benefits employers too. But with only a quarter of the organisations noted as having a presenteeism problem having taken steps to challenge it, there’s a great deal of work to be done. Employers need to take action now to build the flexible cultures, and design the flexible roles, that will deliver healthier workplaces.
To find out more about flexible job design and our other consultancy and training services, please email info@timewise.co.uk or call 020 7633 4444
Published June 2018
Returner programmes are becoming increasingly popular with employers who want to recruit talented, experienced people, growing from just three in 2014 to over 40 last year.
For employees, the benefits of these programmes are obvious. They usually include training and mentoring to boost the returner’s confidence, and to help fill any skills and knowledge gaps. And they often lead to a permanent role, either straight away or at the end of the programme, if both sides are agreeable.
How returner programmes deliver for business
But what’s perhaps less well-known is the advantages they can deliver to an organisation. As well as being a cost-effective way to recruit experienced hires, returner programmes can help employers:
To help employers make the most of these advantages, we have created a set of Best Practice Guidelines for Returner Programmes, in collaboration with Women Returners and the Government Equalities Office. They offer a step-by-step guide to what returner programmes are, how to set them up, how to incorporate flexible working and how to deliver them successfully.
Download pdf Guidelines for Returner ProgrammesI hope you find the guidelines useful, and if Timewise can be of any further help, do please get in touch.
Please call 020 7633 4444 or email info@annie-hacketttimewise-co-uk
Published June 2018
By Karen Mattison, Co-Founder
The recent coverage of the gender pay gap has shone a much-needed light on the scale of the problem around female workplace progression. And it’s encouraging to see so many companies promising to take action, from training HR managers in unconscious bias to introducing mentoring programmes that boost female employees’ confidence.
But although initiatives like these have a part to play in helping women to progress, they don’t actually address the root of the problem, which is this: today’s workplace is not set up for families in which both partners work. The systems we have in place are still, even in 2018, based on senior people being able to put their jobs above everything else.
To give you an example, I was talking to a colleague recently about a networking event. The topic was interesting and relevant; the attendees were people she would have loved to connect with. But there was one sticking point: it was in the evening.
Now, if she really wanted to go, she could have found a way to make it happen. If her partner wasn’t able to get home in time, she could have tried to extend her childcare, or get a babysitter. But not all women, or indeed all parents, can jump through these hoops; and certainly not every time.
The fact is that this workplace norm, like so many others, is structurally incompatible with family life. And until we start dismantling these norms, and replacing them with flexible-friendly ones, female progression, and gender parity, will remain elusive.
It’s for this, critical reason that we have been working with Deloitte to create a Manifesto for Change. Built on our findings from a large-scale study and in-depth interviews with 12 business leaders, it’s a practical plan for action, setting out five steps that UK businesses need to take if they are to reset their workplaces:
The study particularly highlighted the degree to which the status quo is not supportive of flexible progression. 30% of respondents said they felt flexible workers were regarded as having less status and importance, and 25% felt such workers were given access to fewer opportunities and missed out on potential progression and promotion opportunities. It also made it clear that the onus is on employers to take down the barriers to flexible working, through cultural and structural change.
So now, employers, it’s over to you. Our research has flagged up the issues and our manifesto has set out the steps that will help you overcome them. And with the countdown to the next round of gender pay gap reporting having already begun, it’s time to take action. If you need help getting started, please get in touch.
To find out more about our training and consultancy services, including our introductory Flexible Audit, please call 020 7633 4444 or email info@timewise.co.uk
Published May 2018
By Emma Stewart, Co-Founder
At Timewise, we don’t believe that flexibility should come at any price; our focus is on delivering good quality flexible roles. But, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies stated in their 2018 report, “not working full time tends to shut down wage progression.” As a result, too many people end up trapped in entry-level roles, which are poorly paid, because they can’t get the flexibility they need higher up the scale.
One sector that illustrates this perfectly is retail. It employs around three million people, and has a higher incidence of low pay than any other sector. According to the British Retail Consortium’s 2020 research, flexibility in working hours is one of the main reasons people choose to work in the sector – but 56% of retail employees believe they are less likely to get promoted if they work part time.
As a first step towards tackling this problem, we partnered with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and five major retailers to run our Retail Pioneers programme, a piece of action research followed by a written report. Launched last May, it set out to help each retailer understand what was getting in the way of flexibility at store management level, and then design and develop management roles with compatible flexibility built in.
As my colleague Amy Butterworth explains elsewhere, the programme has already begun to deliver real change for our pioneer partners, with each of them taking action to design flexible jobs differently. And that’s brilliant – but it’s not the end of the story. Our initial learnings can also be used by the rest of the retail sector and beyond, to tackle the structural barriers that prevent the progression of low-paid part-time workers. For example:
Initially, some of the pioneers were uncertain about working so closely with other retailers. But as the programme progressed, the benefits of the group approach became clear. The pioneers got valuable insights from sharing their experiences, and regularly challenged each other’s assumptions and assertions.
We all know by now (or we should) that the lack of women in senior roles contributes to the gender pay gap. But that doesn’t mean we should focus all our attention on moving women from middle-management upwards.
Helping women progress from entry-level roles to line management – as our retail pioneers are now doing – will also help close the gap. And building more gender-balanced workplaces makes good business sense for employers too.
During the programme, our five pioneers all came to the same conclusion: that building flexibility into management roles could aid progression for retail team members, enabling them to maximise their skills whilst retaining their flexibility.
However, each retailer had different factors to take into account, and so needed to develop their own individual solution, grounded in their own business. When it comes to flexible job design, there is no one-size-fits-all solution; each organisation needs to take a bespoke approach based on its specific data and drivers.
So far, so good. But, as useful as these learnings are, they need to be championed at a macro level if they’re to deliver real, systemic change.
I’m kick-starting this by joining a government taskforce looking at flexible working, in response to the Taylor Review on modern work. However, far more needs to done by government, employers and industry bodies to create better quality part-time and flexible roles.
Many employers are unaware that the lack of part-time and flexible options at management level traps skilled, ambitious employees in low-paid jobs. And even those who agree that flex is the answer may not know how to get started or, in tight margin sectors, have the resources to do so.
If we are going to answer the Taylor Review’s call for better flexible work which benefits both employers and employees, delivered at scale, then we need more involvement and investment from government, civic society, and other industry bodies. Here’s what needs to happen:
Our work has highlighted a real lack of evidence about what works, without which it will be difficult to persuade employers to take – and critically, invest in – action. It has also revealed the importance of having a road map which sets out HOW employers can design better flexible and part-time jobs, at all levels.
If we are serious about building a fairer jobs market, and helping people trapped in low-paid roles to progress their careers and raise their living standards, we need government to commit to investing in it. This will allow us to test a range of approaches and use our findings to incentivise further business action, something which is particularly critical in low-margin sectors where the business case for change is not well established.
At a regional level, LEPs and metro mayors also have a part to play in sharing good practice and stimulating action to create better quality part-time jobs. This will support their inclusive growth strategies and help create fairer workplaces.
Our Retail Pioneers programme has benefitted hugely from our partnership with the BRC. They played a pivotal role in helping us get the programme off the ground, and are continuing to work with us to develop practical flexible working solutions.
Most industries have an equivalent organisation or body; the more of them that invest in championing flexible working, the greater the impact will be.
Our pioneers found that taking a deep dive into their workforce data threw up some surprises; in the words of Lesley Ballantyne from The John Lewis Partnership, “the programme has brought issues to the surface that we previously only had an inkling of.” Our consultancy team offer a flexible audit which can help support this process.
Underpinning all this, we need a space in which innovative practice can be designed and developed. We invest in innovation for R&D and technology; it’s time we started investing in innovation for designing good quality work. So this autumn, we’re launching the Timewise Innovation Unit, to create a forum in which this can happen.
By doing so, we will be able to help more employers design the flexible jobs that will progress their workers, maximise their skills and ultimately create more productive workplaces. I’m really looking forward to driving this change through the Innovation Unit, and I hope you’ll get involved; watch this space.
To find out more or get involved with the Timewise Innovation Unit, please contact Emma on 020 7633 4444 or email info@timewise.co.uk
Published May 2018
The gender pay gap continues to be a regular staple of the news agenda. And many companies, when publishing their data, attempt to put a context around the fact that they have one. In some cases, they even try to explain the gap away, suggesting that it isn’t so much a problem as a fact of life.
However, research has shown that there are four key reasons why the gender pay gap exists. And for three out of the four, there is a relatively straightforward solution: get better at flexible and part-time working.
Here we explore what the research is telling us – and what employers who are keen to narrow their gap can do about it.
It is certainly true that there are more senior men than women in the workplace as a whole, and as senior people tend to be paid more than junior people, this has a negative effect on the gender pay gap. However, that doesn’t mean that the disparity cannot be tackled.
At the heart of the problem is an assumption that senior jobs ‘naturally’ require long hours and constant availability, and so cannot be done flexibly or part-time. This is largely due to the 1950s pattern of men going out to work and women being at home to support them – enabling men to focus on work to the exclusion of everything else in life. And it has been exacerbated in many sectors by globalisation and always-on technology, which have extended the working day to 10 or 12 hours.
Indeed, employers operating a long-hours culture for senior roles are likely to be the worst offenders. Long hours have been shown to be inherently gendered and to exacerbate the gender pay gap. And research has shown that, for the highest-educated women (those most likely to be in senior roles), the gender pay gap has not fallen at all in the last 25 years.
In the 21st century, this pattern of working is no longer fit for purpose. Instead of assuming that senior roles can only be carried out by someone with no non-work calls on their time, or that senior women need ‘accommodating’ to succeed, the roles need to be designed for the workforce we have now.
That’s a workforce in which 90% of workers either already have, or say they want, flexible and part-time working. A workforce that includes men and women, parents and carers, all of whom want or need to work, but few of whom can do so to the exclusion of everything else.
Employers come up with a range of reasons why flexible and part-time working are impossible in senior roles. “The clients might need you on your day off”; “Your team can’t manage without you”; “You’re the only one with the expert knowledge”; “You’d miss out on too much information if you worked part-time”. The fact is, none of these have to be a barrier. All jobs can be designed differently, with a little imagination and a lot of collaboration.
Here, the argument is that women ‘choose’ to care for children, so they naturally end up in part-time jobs, below their skill levels, and with fewer progression opportunities.
It’s true that the gender pay gap increases after childbirth, and that, by the time their first child is 20, women’s hourly wages are about a third below men’s. And it has been estimated that gender differences in rates of part-time and full-time paid work account for more than half of that gap, especially among the highly-educated.
However, this is based on a similar assumption to the first reason: that is, that part-time jobs are ‘naturally’ less senior, and so are automatically downgraded. And positioning part-time work as women’s ‘choice’ not only suggests that women are responsible for their lower earnings, but also takes the pressure off employers to do anything about it.
It’s also true that there are societal expectations at play here, with men in the UK finding it harder to ask for part-time work. In the Nordic countries, where government initiatives have actively tackled expectations of gender roles, change is much faster. Yet, we know that men in the UK do want to work part-time; research has shown that over half of younger fathers would take a pay cut to work less and spend more time with their family.
In the absence of Nordic-style government intervention, employers who want to close their gender pay gap need to overcome the cultural biases which make it hard for men to opt for part-time or flexible working. And part of the solution here is to make part-time roles more attractive to career-driven people.
Firstly, employers need to redesign jobs so that part-time work doesn’t just mean delivering a full-time job for part-time pay. That kind of set-up isn’t good for anyone. And secondly, they need to redesign jobs at all levels, to ensure that career progression on a part-time basis is not only acceptable, but aspirational.
We know that many of the more poorly-paid occupations are those traditionally done by women, requiring skills traditionally regarded as ‘feminine’, such as people skills and caring skills. So women ‘choose’ to work as nurses, teachers, or shop assistants, while men ‘choose’ to be surgeons, construction workers or engineers. The issue here is that we undervalue traditionally female skills – and that will take a while to change.
But there is also a perceived wisdom that women choose low-paid occupations because they offer more flexibility, or are more family-friendly. Again, the perception that it is a choice to prioritise children over paid work, rather than being due to a lack of viable alternatives, positions the gender pay gap as a fact of life, and releases employers from responsibility for changing it.
As we have found with the other issues cited above, flexible working holds the solution.
Opening up traditionally male sectors and occupations to flexible working would encourage more women to work in them, and more men to switch to working part-time. And building flexible progression into these roles would allow part-timers to develop their careers in a more equitable way.
There is real confusion about the difference between the equal pay issue and the gender pay gap. As we have explained previously, the gender pay gap is based on the difference between the average hourly pay rate for men and the average hourly pay rate for women, largely due to the reasons cited above.
In contrast, the equal pay issue is one of discrimination: paying men and women different amounts for doing the same job. So while this does feed into the gender pay gap, it isn’t the same thing.
We don’t need a flexible working solution here; the law has been clear that men and women should be paid equally since the Equal Pay Act of 1970. However, it is worth pointing out that discrimination sometimes arises from the same assumptions about women’s roles that are identified above.
It’s clear, then, that cultural bias, societal assumptions and a lack of progress in workplace design all contribute to the gender pay gap. And we at Timewise know better than most that flexible job design is the key to bringing about change.
To find out about our training and consultancy services that could help you tackle your gender pay gap, please call 020 7633 4444 or email info@timewise.co.uk
Published April 2018
